REESE  LIBRARY 

OF  THK 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


THE  GROWTH  OF   MODERN  NATIONS 


THE  GROWTH  OF 
MODERN  NATIONS 

A   HISTORY   OF   THE   PARTICULARIST 
FORM    OF   SOCIETY 

TRANSLATED   FROM   THE   FRENCH 
OF   HENRI    DE   TOURVILLE 

BY 

M.    G.    LOCH 


NEW  YORK 

LONGMANS,     GREEN    &    CO. 

LONDON:     EDWARD     ARNOLD 

1907 

[All  rights  reserved] 


£  • 


TRANSLATOR'S    NOTE 


THE  following  Prefatory  Notice  was  inserted  by  the  Editors 
in  the  original  edition  : — 

"  The  present  volume  is  a  collection  of  articles  written  by 
Henri  de  Tourville,  which  appeared  in  the  review  entitled 
Science  Sociale  from  February  1897  to  February  1903,  under 
the  title  of  Histoire  de  la  Formation  particulariste. 

"  The  Author  died  a  few  days  after  completing  the  last 
chapter  of  his  work. 

"  We  have  not  ventured  in  any  way  to  modify  the  form  in 
which  the  work  first  appeared.  Each  article  forms  a  chapter 
in  this  book. 

"  But  whilst  we  have  retained  the  title  which  Henri  de  Tour- 
ville himself  chose  for  his  work,  '  A  History  of  the  Particularist 
Form  of  Society,'  a  title  intelligent  enough  in  a  special  review 
and  to  readers  familiar  with  his  ideas,  we  thought  it  necessary 
to  add  as  a  supplementary  title, '  The  Origin  and  Development 
of  the  Leading  Nations  of  the  Present  Day,'  with  the  idea 
that  it  would  be  more  comprehensible  to  the  public  at  large 
and  would  make  the  purport  and  interest  of  the  book  more 
evident." 


174539 


CONTENTS 


CHAP.  PAGE 

I.  THE  ORIGIN  OF  THE  GERMANIC  AND  GOTHIC  RACES          .        1 
II.  THE  ORIGIN  OF  ODIN  AND  HIS  FOLLOWERS  .  .11 

III.  THE  SEACOAST  FISHERMEN  OF  NORWAY      .  .  .38 

IV.  THE  SEACOAST  FISHERMEN  OF  NORWAY — Continued  .      68 
V.  THE  SAXON     .......      78 

VI.  THE  FRANK— PART  I.  .  .  .  .  .95 

VII.  THE  FRANK— PART  II.          .  .  .  .  .112 

VIII.  THE  FRANK— PART  III.         .  .  .  .  .129 

IX.  THE  FRANK— PART  IV.         .....     147 

X.  THE  FEUDAL  SYSTEM — PART  I.  CHARLEMAGNE       .  .165 

XI.  THE  FEUDAL  SYSTEM— PART   II.   THE  DECLINE   OF  THE 

CARLOVINGIANS       .  .  .  .  .  .181 

XII.  THE  FEUDAL  SYSTEM — PART  III.  THE  ZENITH  OF  FEU- 
DALISM       .......     196 

XIII.  THE  INTRODUCTION  OF  THE  SAXONS  INTO  GREAT  BRITAIN 

BY  THE  JUTES        ......    213 

XIV.  THE  PREDOMINANCE  OF  THE  SAXONS  OVER  THE  CELTS  AND 

THE  JUTES  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN     ....     226 

XV.  THE  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  SAXONS  OVER  THE  ANGLES  IN 

GREAT  BRITAIN      ......    239 

XVI.  THE  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  SAXONS  OVER  THE  DANES  IN 

GREAT  BRITAIN      ......    256 

XVII.  THE  TRIUMPH  OF  THE  SAXONS  OVER  NORMAN  FEUDALISM 

IN  GREAT  BRITAIN  .  .  .  .  .273 

XVIII.  THE  COMMUNAL  MOVEMENT  IN  FRANCE     .  .  .    287 

XIX.  THE  COMMUNAL  MOVEMENT  IN  FRANCE— Continued          .     300 
XX.  CHIVALRY  OR  FEUDAL  MILITARISM  315 


viii  CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

XXI.  THE  REVIVAL  OF  ROYAL  POWER  IN  FRANCE      .  .     328 

XXII.  THE  NEW  GERMANISATION  OF  CENTRAL  EUROPE  IN  THE 

MIDDLE  AGES     ......     343 

XXIII.  THE  COMMERCE  OF  THE  FREE  TOWNS  IN  THE  MIDDLE 

AGES       .......     3G2 

XXIV.  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  THE  EAST  AND  WEST  INDIES          .     381 

XXV.  THE  GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES  OF  MODERN  TIMES  : 

SPAIN,  FRANCE  .  .  .  .  .  .399 

XXVI.  THE  GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES  OF  MODERN  TIMES  : 

FRANCE — Continued        .  .  .  .  .417 

XXVII.  THE  GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES  OF  MODERN  TIMES  : 
THE  CONNECTION  BETWEEN  THE  A  NCI  EN  REGIME 
AND  THE  REVOLUTION  .....  439 

XXVIII.  THE  LAST  OF  THE  GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES  AND 
THE  GREAT  PARTICULARIST  NATIONS  OF  THE  PRESENT 
DAY  :  THE  GERMAN  EMPIRE,  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE  .  457 

XXIX.  THE  GREAT  PARTICULARIST  NATIONS  OF  THE  PRESENT 

DAY:  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE— Continued         .  .    469 

XXX.  THE  GREAT  PARTICULARIST  NATIONS  OF  THE  PRESENT 

DAY:  THE  FOUNDATION  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES       .    482 

INDEX  501 


THE    GROWTH    OF    MODERN 
NATIONS 


CHAPTER   I 
THE  ORIGIN  OF  THE  GERMANIC  AND  GOTHIC  RACES 

THE  transformation  of  the  patriarchal  into  the  particularist 
family  was  brought  about  in  Scandinavia,  a  geographical 
area  including  Norway,  Sweden,  and  Denmark.  Scandinavia 
is  divided  from  end  to  end  into  two  slopes,  one  inclining  towards 
the  east  and  the  other  westwards.  On  the  eastern  slope  it 
received  the  communal  family ;  on  the  western  it  produced 
the  particularist  family.  Of  all  the  changes  Nature  has 
wrought  in  the  human  race  by  her  influence  alone,  that  is  by 
far  the  greatest. 

Intensive  cultivation  is  man's  chief  work  on  the  eastern 
slope.  This,  however,  applies  only  to  its  southern  end,  as  the 
northern  end  forms  part  of  the  glacial  region.  The  southern 
end  lies  in  the  Baltic,  the  northern  in  the  Gulf  of  Bothnia. 

On  the  western  slope,  from  north  to  south,  fishing,  combined 
with  small  farming,  is  the  chief  occupation. 

Such,  in  a  word,  is  the  scene  of  operations. 

In  the  transformation  of  the  communal  into  the  particularist 
family  both  slopes  played  their  part.  For,  though  the  meta- 
morphosis was  completed  on  the  western  slope,  certain  elements 
that  were  indispensable  to  the  change  were  contributed  by  the 
eastern  slope.  This  is  easy  of  proof.  For,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
certain  races  that  have  been  known  to  settle  on  the  western 
slope  without  previously  undergoing  any  modification  on  the 
I 


2  THE  ORIGIN  OF 

eastern  slope  have  not  produced  the  particularist  family. 
Thus  the  northern  end  of  Norway,  over  which  the  Norwegians 
have  now  spread,  has  been  inhabited  from  the  beginning  by 
Laps,  who  came  thither  from  their  tundras  direct ;  and  the 
Laps  have  continued  to  live  a  thoroughly  communal  life. 

In  the  first  place,  then,  we  must  consider  what  distinctive 
elements  were  contributed  by  the  eastern  slope  ;  and  afterwards 
we  will  study  the  transformation  which  the  western  slope 
effected  in  these  distinctive  elements. 

Before  their  settlement,  the  people  that  made  their  homes 
on  the  eastern  slope  were  of  a  social  type  somewhat  analogous 
to  that  of  the  Celts.  This  does  not  imply  that  they  were  Celtic  in 
origin  ;  for  they  belonged  to  a  later  migration — the  migration  of 
the  Germans.  But,  in  their  travels,  influenced  by  similar  condi- 
tions, they  acquired  characteristics  not  unlike  those  of  the  Celts. 

The  Celts  were  shepherds  who  drove  their  flocks  from  pasture 
to  pasture,  across  the  wooded  lands  of  Europe,  following  the 
attractive  road  formed  by  the  rich  and  open  steppes  of  the 
Danube.  The  valley  of  the  Danube  is  open  in  this  sense,  that 
its  fruitful  steppes  form,  as  it  were,  a  regular  funnel.  Once  in 
the  funnel,  nomads  were  compelled  to  pass  the  "  Iron  Gates," 
and  upon  emerging  on  the  other  side  they  were  taken  in  a  trap. 
The  vast  rich  lands  of  Hungary  lay  before  them,  and  there  they 
devoured  the  bait  till  others  entered  after  them.  When  pressed 
forward  by  those  that  came  behind,  they  followed  the  passage 
of  the  Danube  between  Vienna  and  Passau;  on  reaching  the 
Bavarian  plateau  they  separated,  and,  crossing  the  two 
thresholds  of  the  Rhine,  the  one  above  Constance  and  the 
other  above  Bale,  they  at  length  found  their  way  into  the 
broad  zone  of  forests  inhabited  by  the  Gauls. 

The  Germans  were  shepherds  who  drove  their  flocks  from 
pasture  to  pasture,  across  the  wooded  lands  of  Europe — following 
a  different  track  through  the  steppes — those  barren  steppes 
farther  north,  the  entrance  to  which  is  blocked  in  great  measure 
by  a  continuous  line  of  obstacles,  formed  by  the  lagoons  at  the 
lower  part  of  the  Baltic,  by  the  broad  belt  of  Lithuanian  forests, 
by  the  impassable  marshes  of  Pinsk  and  the  sparsely  wooded 
slopes  of  the  Carpathians. 

A  grassy  passage  lying  just  between  the  wooded  slopes  of 
the  Carpathians  and  the  marshes  of  Pinsk  forms  the  entrance 


THE  GERMANIC  AND  GOTHIC  RACES  3 

to  the  steppe  ;  there  is  a  narrow  way  through  from  Kieff  to 
Lublin,  over  the  last  slopes  of  the  Carpathians,  just  where  the 
woods  have  ended  and  the  marshes  are  about  to  begin ;  this 
band  of  steppes  forms  an  isthmus  between  Russia  and  Germany. 

Even  now  it  is  the  chief  gateway.  Farther  north  it  is 
necessary  to  pass  above  the  marshes  of  Pinsk  in  order  to  clear 
the  succession  of  bogs  formed  by  the  Beresina — a  passage 
that  was  made  famous  by  that  sad  disaster  the  recollection 
of  which  is  enough  to  make  us  appreciate  its  difficulties. 

The  steppe  of  Germany  opens  beyond  this  KiefT-Lublin 
pass.  It  has  a  very  remarkable  formation  :  it  penetrates  into 
the  heart  of  Europe  like  a  large  wedge,  and  takes  an  oblique 
direction,  thus  guiding  immigrants  by  imperceptible  degrees 
from  south  to  north.  It  has  indeed  been  made  by  a  master 
hand,  and  God  had  in  mind  the  destinies  of  the  human  race. 
The  aim  in  view  was  to  lead  a  race  of  shepherds  from  the  east 
to  the  extreme  west  and  from  the  south  to  the  extreme  north 
in  such  a  way  that  they  might  be  safe  from  the  bands  of  adven- 
turers from  the  great  empires  of  the  Mediterranean  and  from 
the  sterilising  influence  of  the  glacial  region.  This  slanting 
line  is  drawn  between  the  two,  and  reaches  from  end  to  end. 
The  thing  is  done  ! 

The  shepherds  took  this  route  in  a  body  only  when  that  of 
the  Danube,  which  was  farther  south,  richer,  and  more  attrac- 
tive, was  choked  up. 

The  scattered  hunters  of  the  paleolithic  period  had  gone 
before  them,  followed  by  bands  of  hunters,  who  must  have 
gone  as  far  north  as  the  land  of  Denmark,  to  judge  by  the 
immense  heaps  of  culinary  rubbish  which  they  left  there. 
These  in  succession  had  cleared  the  country  of  most  of  the 
wild  and  ferocious  animals  that  might  have  been  dangerous 
to  the  flocks  or  have  deprived  them  of  their  means  of  existence. 
They  had,  moreover,  made  tracks  and  resting-places  in  many 
parts  ;  they  had  opened  up  the  road  at  difficult  points.  But 
here,  as  elsewhere,  they  were  bound  to  disappear  before  the 
regular,  solid,  and  organised  advance  of  the  shepherds. 

Now  that  the  shepherds  have  entered  the  obliquely  slanting 
steppe  of  Germany  in  large  numbers  and  in  good  order,  let  us 
see  what  they  become  ;  and  with  this  object  let  us  examine  the 
curious  formation  of  the  steppe  in  greater  detail. 


4  THE  ORIGIN  OF 

This  great  "  wedge  "  which  juts  into  Europe  was  still  under 
the  sea  at  the  end  of  the  quaternary  period  and  at  the  beginning 
of  the  present  geological  era.  It  is  a  vast  sandy  plain,  studded 
with  moist  and  fertile  patches.  The  fact  that  it  was  under 
the  sea  accounts  for  the  alternation  of  dry  and  damp  areas 
in  the  north  of  Germany — where,  however,  the  dry  places  are 
the  more  extensive — and  for  the  medley  of  barren  steppes, 
wooded  oases,  marshes,  and  lakes.  The  forests,  which  consist 
chiefly  of  evergreen  trees,  end  at  the  plain's  edge  as  abruptly 
as  the  lakes,  because  the  conditions  of  their  growth  are  quite 
local  and  have  precise  limits,  and  in  this  way  the  steppe  passes 
in  its  full  breadth  into  the  midst  of  land  sprinkled  with  clumps 
of  green  trees  and  inland  lakes. 

It  is  clearly  a  land  equally  attractive  to  the  wanderer  or 
the  settler — which  would  account  for  the  perpetual  alternations 
of  two  kinds  of  inhabitants  in  that  part  of  Germany  ;  for  it  was 
periodically  invaded  by  the  nomads  and  reconquered  by  the 
stationary  tribes. 

This  will  be  better  explained  by  what  follows. 

In  the  period  before  it  dried  up,  the  sea  which  of  old  occupied 
this  space  seems  to  have  been  no  more  than  a  vast  gulf  with 
a  large  opening  towards  the  east,  but  bordered  by  two  banks 
to  north  and  south.  On  the  south  its  waves  beat  against  the 
northern  slopes  of  the  Carpathians  and  the  chains  which  pro- 
long them  to  the  west.  On  the  north  they  washed  the  Baltic 
hills,  which  are  for  a  short  distance  parallel  to  the  Baltic  Sea. 

Though  these  two  barriers  that  enclose  the  gulf  to  north 
and  south  are  very  far  apart  towards  the  east,  they  approach 
one  another  towards  the  west  until  they  join  in  a  blunt  angle 
east  of  the  Elbe.  They  are  represented  to-day  by  the  two 
bands  of  fertile  land  in  the  Germanic  plain.  Like  all  submarine 
regions  that  are  bordered  by  hills,  these  two  bands  have  been 
covered  by  rich  deposits  brought  down  from  the  upper  basins 
by  the  rains.  The  southern  band  exhibits  this  phenomenon  to 
a  striking  degree,  because  it  remained  a  seacoast  for  a  much 
longer  time  ;  the  northern  belt  owes  its  relative  fertility  rather 
to  a  somewhat  less  barren  primitive  subsoil,  and  also  to  the 
shelter  afforded  by  the  Baltic  hills  and  to  its  slope,  which  is  for 
the  most  part  towards  the  southern  sun.  In  certain  privileged 
spots  it  can  produce  even  vines. 


THE  GERMANIC  AND  GOTHIC  RACES  5 

Whilst  the  shepherds  found,  and  would  still  find  to-day, 
a  broad  route  by  the  steppes  at  the  bottom  of  the  ancient  sea, 
those  who  wished  or  were  forced  to  fall  out  by  the  way  had  at 
their  disposal  the  two  fertile  bands,  where  they  could  con- 
veniently settle. 

In  every  epoch  of  history  the  peculiar  physical  constitution 
of  the  country  has  been  largely  responsible  for  the  political 
and  administrative  divisions  of  Germany,  which  in  their  turn 
accentuate  the  features  of  its  structure. 

At  the  present  time  the  old  southern  bank  is  marked  by 
Galicia,  Silesia,  Lusatia,  and  the  kingdom  of  Saxony,  all  rich 
lands  situated  lengthwise  at  the  foot  of  the  Carpathians  and 
the  ranges  which  extend  beyond.  The  northern  band  is  marked 
by  the  duchy  of  Prussia,  Pomerania,  and  Mecklenburg,  also 
rich  lands  situated  lengthwise  along  the  Baltic.  Between 
these  two  bands  the  broad  areas  of  Poland  and  the  duchy  of 
Posen  are  fitted  in  so  as  to  form  a  triangle  ;  they  are  poor  and 
barren  countries.  The  Polish  element  in  Poland  and  the  duchy 
of  Posen,  which  penetrates,  as  it  were,  like  a  wedge  into  Germany, 
still  shows  very  clearly  the  point  to  which  the  nomads  of  all 
time  have  tended  through  the  centre  of  the  steppe. 

In  the  first  centuries  of  our  era,  when  the  great  eastern 
invasions  of  Wends  and  Slavs  took  place,  the  new  tribes  of  bar- 
barians were  distributed  over  the  surface  of  Germany  in  exactly 
the  same  way.  In  the  Middle  Ages  it  was  the  same  thing  again. 

With  this  knowledge  of  the  structure  of  the  area,  it  is  easy 
to  understand  that  those  who  were  at  the  head  of  the  Germanic 
invasion  pushed  straight  on  with  their  flocks  and  horses  to  the 
extreme  point  of  the  steppe,  and  that  there  they  came  upon 
the  land  which  seemed  to  invite  them  most  pressingly  to  take 
up  a  rudimentary  kind  of  agriculture,  an  occupation  to  which 
they  were  forced  to  turn  by  the  incessant  pressure  of  those 
behind.  This  spot  is  most  favourable,  because  the  two  fertile 
bands  here  close  in  towards  one  another,  and  thus  form  a 
broader  space  for  cultivation.  If  a  tribe  settled  there  it  could 
remain  more  compact,  and  ran  less  risk  of  being  divided  than 
in  other  places.  In  fact,  it  was  there  that  the  famous  Suevi 
lived  in  Roman  times  of  whom  Caesar  says,  "  Suevorum  gens 
est  longe  maxima  et  bellicosissima  German orum  omnium :  hi 
centum  pagos  habere  dicuntur "  (iv.  1).  They  had  been 


6  THE  ORIGIN  OF 

able  to  keep  close  together  in  large  groups.  In  the  Middle 
Ages  the  March  of  Brandenburg  occupied  this  very  place  ;  it  was 
the  great  fulcrum  for  the  reconquest  of  the  Germanic  steppe 
which  the  Slavs  had  conquered  from  one  end  to  the  other.  In 
modern  times,  too,  it  is  owing  to  her  central  position  between 
the  two  bands  that  close  in  from  the  north  and  the  south  that 
Berlin  exercises  such  powerful  control  over  the  German  territory 
of  the  Baltic  plain  and  unites  it  to  the  part  beyond  and  to  the 
Saxon  plain. 

It  will  not  be  out  of  place"  here  to  give  one  more  detail, 
which  will  complete  our  knowledge,  from  the  point  of  view  of 
Social  Science,  of  the  wonderful  natural  configuration  of  the 
land  of  Germany.  It  is  necessary  to  be  well  acquainted  with 
it,  not  only  for  the  question  now  before  us,  but  also  for  all  the 
rest  of  our  investigation. 

It  must  be  observed,  then,  that  though  these  fertile  bands 
are  far  apart,  they  are  connected  with  one  another  by  convenient 
river-ways,  which  pass  directly  from  one  to  the  other  across 
the  steppe.  It  is  true  the  general  flow  of  water,  the  "  thalweg  " 
of  the  steppe,  is  from  east  to  west,  like  the  steppe  itself ;  it  is 
indicated  by  the  Bug,  the  mid- Vistula,  the  Wartha,  and  the 
Spree,  which  is  a  tributary  of  the  Elbe.  But  these  rivers, 
instead  of  forming  a  continuous  stream,  form  a  line  interrupted 
at  intervals,  for  at  the  point  where  one  would  be  about  to  join 
on  to  the  end  of  another,  it  is  abruptly  divided  from  it  by  a  rise 
in  the  ground,  and  also  by  transverse  river-beds,  which  descend 
straight  from  the  Carpathians  and  connect  the  south  with  the 
north.  On  the  map  these  river-beds,  that  stretch  from  the 
slopes  of  the  Carpathians  to  the  Baltic  hills,  appear  like  cables 
fastening  together  the  two  shores  of  the  ancient  sea.  In  reality 
they  are  water-ways  which  link  together  the  agricultural 
populations  on  the  two  fertile  bands,  situated  as  they  are 
some  distance  apart.  It  is  by  these  natural  roads  that  pass 
from  the  fertile  bands  across  the  barren  centre  that  the  unity 
of  Germany  is  secured. 

Now  at  the  point  in  which  we  are  at  present  interested — that 
is  to  say,  at  the  western  extremity  of  the  steppe — the  junction 
between  the  two  fertile  bands — which  are,  moreover,  very  near 
together — is  formed  not  by  a  single  river  but  by  a  whole  network 
of  lakes  and  water-ways.  The  inhabitants  of  to-day,  as  did  those 


THE  GERMANIC  AND  GOTHIC  RACES  7 

of  past  times,  use  them  as  means  of  communication  from  north 
to  south  and  east  to  west.  The  peasants  of  all  the  country  side 
for  miles  round  Berlin  use  boats  as  their  only  means  of  transport. 

This  explains  how  the  country  of  Germany  is,  broadly  speak- 
ing, united,  in  spite  of  the  steppe  that  penetrates  so  far  into  it 
and  separates  the  fertile  regions.  Above  all  it  brings  out  very 
clearly  the  peculiarly  favourable  conditions  of  the  terminal 
point  of  the  Germanic  plain. 

Now  the  new  light  thus  thrown  upon  our  scene  of  action 
brings  us  a  step  forward  in  the  study  of  our  subject.  The 
formation  of  the  whole  German  plain,  and  especially  of  the 
region  between  the  Elbe  and  the  Oder,  which  is  composed  of 
fertile  lands  interspersed  among  watery  areas,  had  its  influence 
upon  the  Germanic  tribes.  It  made  them  learn  water-craft, 
though  they  were  inland  people,  while  at  the  same  time  they 
were  able  to  practise  land  cultivation.  Those  of  them  who  were 
driven  out  into  Jutland  and  the  Danish  islands  were  thus  pre- 
pared beforehand  for  the  exigencies  of  their  new  dwelling-place. 

Such  were  in  detail  the  geographical  conditions  of  the 
country  which  the  Goths  originally  inhabited  before  passing 
into  Scandinavia. 

Though  the  place  we  have  described  was  certainly  advantage- 
ous to  settlers,  yet  it  had  drawbacks  for  the  first-comers,  as  it 
was  the  particular  point  to  which  the  whole  movement  of  the 
shepherds  across  the  Germanic  steppe  tended.  All  the  nomad 
invasions  of  the  east  into  Lower  Germany  have  passed  un- 
hesitatingly to  that  privileged  place.  Even  at  the  present  day 
Berlin  looks  with  some  anxiety  towards  the  east,  for  Poland, 
which  is  as  much  Russian  as  German,  brings  the  east  very 
near  her ;  the  duchy  of  Posen,  too,  is  not  very  far  off.  Thus 
the  first  occupants,  afterwards  the  Goths,  and  later  the  Swabians, 
who  came  behind  them,  found  themselves  pushed  towards  the 
west  by  the  pressure  of  the  column  of  nomads  which  kept 
coming  up  from  the  south-east. 

On  leaving  the  end  of  the  Germanic  steppe,  the  traveller 
comes  upon  three  very  different  kinds  of  soil.  If  he  goes  straight 
to  the  west,  he  comes  upon  the  great  waste  lands  by  the  shores 
of  the  North  Sea,  a  region  comparable  to  the  moors  of  Gascony — 
a  desert  land  with  marshes  and  pine  forests  on  sand !  If  he 
takes  an  oblique  direction  towards  the  south-west,  he  comes 


8  THE  ORIGIN  OF 

upon  the  mountains  of  Thuringia  and  Hesse — a  Saxon  Switzer- 
land with  promise  of  nothing  but  poverty  and  isolation.  But 
if,  on  the  other  hand,  he  turns  to  the  north-west,  the  traveller 
finds  the  continuation  of  the  fertile  band  of  soil ;  this  band, 
however,  becomes  smaller  and  smaller  till  it  finally  disappears 
opposite  the  island  of  Fyen,  midway  up  the  coast  of  Denmark. 
These  are  the  three  blind  alleys  that  close  the  Germanic  steppe 
at  the  Elbe. 

The  first  Germans  had  therefore  to  come  to  a  decision. 
Those  who  happened  upon  the 'moors  or  on  the  mountains 
pushed  towards  the  Rhine  to  seek  their  living.  They  soon 
came  into  collision  with  the  Celts.  The  vanguard  forced  its  way 
into  the  north  of  Gaul,  where  it  mingled  with  the  Belgians  ; 
but  the  main  body  settled  in  the  regions  between  the  Elbe  and 
the  Rhine,  where  it  degenerated.  It  may  be  observed  that  they 
underwent  no  change  when  they  came  in  contact  with  the 
North  Sea  beside  the  barren  moors  any  more  than  did  their 
precursors  the  hunters  or  the  Laps  of  Norway. 

Those,  however,  who  followed  the  fertile  band  as  far  as  the 
middle  of  the  Danish  peninsula  were  in  much  the  same  situation 
as  were  the  Pelasgians  on  the  coasts  of  Asia  Minor.  At  a  very 
short  distance  from  the  shore  they  saw  an  archipelago  which 
offered  them  a  safe  retreat  from  the  nomads.  They  reached  it 
easily  by  boat.  There  they  encountered  only  the  necessarily 
weak  resistance  of  the  Fins — for  stationary  or  semi-stationary 
tribes  have  great  facilities  for  expelling  semi-hunters  or  semi- 
shepherds,  and  especially  for  expelling  them  from  islands  !  It 
is  a  fact  that  constantly  recurs. 

The  Goths  have  now  reached  the  eastern  slope  of  Scandinavia. 
We  know  their  stock-in-trade.  They  are  shepherds  who  have 
turned  into  rudimentary  farmers  with  a  knowledge  of  water-craft. 

The  soil  of  this  country  is  far  more  fertile  than  that  of 
Germany.  Besides,  the  sea  wards  off  incursions.  It  even 
separates  the  tribes  into  isolated  groups.  In  this  way  the 
Goths  pass  to  an  agricultural  and  completely  sedentary  life. 

From  thorough  peasants  they  became  intensive  cultivators, 
i.e.  they  used  artificial  means  for  increasing  the  natural  fertility 
of  the  soil.  They  kept  the  Fins  as  slaves  and  employed  them 
for  manual  labour ;  but  they  themselves  worked  the  soil  and 
ploughed. 


THE  GERMANIC  AND  GOTHIC  RACES  9 

They  brought  with  them  from  the  German  plain  all  the 
domestic  animals,  horses,  oxen,  sheep,  and  pigs. 

The  horse,  which  was  everything  to  them  in  the  great  steppe, 
thenceforward  lost  much  of  his  importance  ;  the  Eddas  tell  us 
that  the  ancestor  of  the  Giants,  who  represent  the  Goths,  is  the 
cow  "  Hudhumbla."  Carriages  and  carts  were  soon  invented, 
as  is  shown  by  the  monuments  of  the  Bronze  Age ;  corn  was 
grown  and  wool  was  spun. 

The  superiority  of  their  products  over  those  of  their  neigh- 
bours gave  them  opportunities  for  commerce.  They  exchanged 
the  surplus  of  their  corn  and  wool  for  the  furs  of  all  sorts  which 
the  Fins,  who  lived  on  the  east  of  the  Baltic  and  of  the  Gulf  of 
Bothnia,  were  able  to  procure  in  great  abundance. 

These  furs  from  the  north  might  have  been  a  true  source 
of  riches  in  their  hands  ;  the  same  might  be  said,  and  with  even 
better  reason,  of  the  yellow  amber  from  the  coasts  of  Denmark, 
the  earliest  kind  known.  But  the  absence  of  any  large  market 
in  the  south  made  trade  in  these  goods  somewhat  limited. 

However,  living  as  they  did  on  islands  and  on  much  indented 
coasts  very  near  together,  the  Goths  could  not  fail  to  use  the 
sea.  The  strong  currents  in  their  seas  and  straits  soon  brought 
them  to  construct  large  boats.  They  became  accustomed  to 
seafaring. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Baltic  coast  to  the  south  and  the 
east  of  the  Oder  is,  as  it  were,  half  sea,  half  land,  and  makes 
navigation  extremely  difficult ;  it  is  this  (we  may  remark  in 
passing)  which  even  at  the  present  day  prevents  the  Prussians 
from  naturally  acquiring  a  real,  living  maritime  power,  in  spite 
of  their  efforts  and  pretensions.  Moreover,  in  winter  the  coast 
is  ice-bound. 

Hence,  in  spite  of  the  comparison  we  made  just  now  between 
the  Goths  and  the  Pelasgians  there  is  a  terrible  difference  between 
the  Baltic  and  the  Mediterranean,  for  the  latter  smiles  upon  the 
sailor,  and  is  bordered  by  the  richest  coasts,  and  is  near  to  the 
richest  empires  !  Scandinavia  is  no  more  than  a  strip  of  tem- 
perate land  jutting  out  into  the  midst  of  ice. 

So  our  Gothic  peasants,  though  they  found  opportunities 
for  progress  which  made  them  very  superior  to  the  mass  of 
half-wandering  Germans,  were,  after  all,  only  rustics,  good  at 
farming,  well-to-do,  peaceful,  illiterate  folks.  That  they  were 


io    ORIGIN  OF  GERMANIC  AND  GOTHIC  RACES 

of  this  peculiar  type  is  proved  beyond  a  doubt  by  all  tlie  evidence 
furnished  by  history  and  archaeology,  as  well  as  by  Social  Science, 
which  has  enabled  us  to  establish  it  by  a  study  of  their  resources. 

We  now  know  the  first  element  which  the  eastern  slope  of 
Scandinavia  will  provide  for  the  peopling  of  the  western. 
Among  shepherds  who  have  become  intensive  farmers  the 
patriarchal  system  gradually  weakens  ;  a  breach  is  made  in 
the  community  by  the  capable  members  still  more  than  by  the 
others  ;  instead  of  a  swarm  going  forth  at  rare  intervals,  a 
constant  emigration  of  capable  individuals  takes  place. 

This,  then,  is  what  the  eastern  slope  can  send  to  the  western  : 
individually  capable  emigrants  with  some  knowledge  of  agri- 
culture. 

Nor  has  it  been  slow  in  sending  them  forth.  At  the  beginning 
of  the  Christian  era  there  were  people  already  spread,  or  rather 
scattered  few  and  far  between,  over  the  coasts  of  Norway  within 
a  certain  distance  of  Gothland,  the  southern  part  of  Sweden. 

But  before  following  these  emigrants  to  the  western  slope 
to  see  what  becomes  of  them,  and  how  they  change  into  heads  of 
particularist  families,  we  are  bound  to  consider  another  element 
which  appears  on  the  eastern  slope,  and  which  has  exercised  a 
powerful  influence  upon  the  phenomenon  we  are  examining. 

It  is  obvious  that  what  is  lacking  in  shepherds  who  have 
become  peasants,  and  have  no  opportunities  of  commerce 
within  reach,  is  progress  in  the  customary  arts,  intellectual 
culture,  and  political  power,  even  though,  their  community  may 
be  more  or  less  well  organised  in  other  respects.  This  second 
element,  which  Greece  and  Italy  received  from  the  beginning 
from  the  Pelasgians  and  fostered  by  their  trade  with,  the 
Phoenicians  and  Carthaginians,  is  the  urban,  or,  as  we  say, 
the  urbane  element,  what  we  more  familiarly  denote  by  the 
equivocal  word  "  civilisation "  (civitas,  civilisation ;  urbs, 
urbanity). 

Gothland  in  her  isolation  did  not  receive  this  urbane  element 
till  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era.  She  received  it  not 
from  the  Romans,  who  were  then  masters  of  the  seas  and  took 
the  lead  in  useful  arts,  nor  from  the  Gauls,  who  were  her  nearest, 
most  civilised,  and  urbane  neighbours,  but  from  the  east,  by 
that  same  road  across  the  steppe  which  had  brought  the  Goths. 
This  will  be  our  next  point. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE   ORIGIN   OF   ODIN  AND  HIS  FOLLOWERS 

THE  particularist  form  of  society  had  its  origin  among  the 
emigrants  from  the  fertile  lands  of  the  eastern  slope  of 
Scandinavia.  The  best  land  is  found  in  the  east  of  Jutland, 
the  Danish  islands,  and  the  south  of  Sweden,  which  forms  a 
kind  of  peninsula,  so  deeply  do  the  lakes  Wener  and  Wetter 
penetrate  into  it. 

These  emigrants  were  descended  from  farmers,  as  we  have 
seen.  They  were  the  sons  and  daughters  of  stalwart  Gothic 
peasants,  a  tribe  of  Germans  who  came  out  from  the  great 
steppes  on  the  banks  of  the  Caspian  and  the  Black  Sea,  and 
passed  gradually  from  the  pastoral  art  to  the  cultivation  of 
land,  and  from  elementary  cultivation  to  systematic  cultivation. 
This  change  of  occupation  was  gradually  forced  on  them  during 
their  long  migration  across  the  plain  of  Lower  Germany,  where 
the  steppe  narrows  gradually  from  the  east  westwards,  until 
it  ends  in  the  fertile  regions  of  Scandinavia.  With  the  develop- 
ment of  ability,  which  resulted  from  practising  the  art  of  agricul- 
ture, came  certain  changes  in  the  constitution  of  the  family.  The 
number  of  intelligent  and  energetic  children  in  the  patriarchal 
community  increased.  They  were  impelled  to  break  the  bonds 
of  the  large  family  association,  which  weighed  upon  them,  to 
substitute  instead  more  limited  groups,  and  to  become  their 
own  masters  with  independent  work.  The  freer  and  more 
active  life  of  the  new  homes  thus  formed  fostered  a  greater 
spirit  of  independence  and  enterprise  in  the  children,  and 
created  the  ability  to  satisfy  it. 

But  the  influence  of  a  progressive  system  of  agriculture 
was  not  the  only  cause  of  the  development  of  the  Gothic  race. 

The  most  famous  and  most  living  traditions  of  Scandinavia, 
which  tell  us  of  this  agricultural  prosperity,  corroborated  as 


12  THE  ORIGIN  OF 

they  are  by  all  the  historical,  geographical,  and  social  facts 
that  we  have  just  mentioned,  are  still  better  evidence  of  the 
existence  of  a  civilisation  which  shows  a  very  remarkable 
development  in  the  industrial  and  intellectual  arts,  in  the  art 
of  government  and  in  town  life,  a  civilisation  which  was  grafted 
on  to  the  rural  civilisation  of  the  Goths  shortly  before  the 
Christian  era.  If  any  fact  is  marked  indelibly  on  the  memory 
of  any  people  it  is  this.  It  is  expressed  at  length  with  vigour 
and  precision  in  the  old  songs  of  the  country.  They  are  never 
tired  of  repeating  that  all  that  had  to  do  with  the  foundation 
of  cities,  with  industrial  arts,  intellectual  culture,  and  public 
authority  in  Scandinavia  did  not  originate  among  the  people 
themselves,  was  not  an  indigenous  growth  nor  the  outcome  of 
their  local  development,  but  was  an  importation.  The  previous 
history  of  this  imported  culture  is  unknown,  but  all  the  legends 
bear  witness  that  on  a  given  day  it  suddenly  made  its  appearance 
as  if  by  a  miracle.  That  explains  why  it  was  afterwards  looked 
upon  as  such  a  striking  event,  and  why  it  made  such  a  profound 
and  vivid  impression  upon  a  whole  people  who  retained  the 
memory  of  it  through  centuries  of  momentous  crises. 

In  the  eleventh,  twelfth,  and  thirteenth  centuries,  at  a  time 
when  the  country  had  been  definitely  converted  to  Christianity, 
and  was  breaking  many  of  the  bonds  which  bound  it  to  its 
heathen  past,  some  remarkable  men  from  different  parts  of 
Scandinavia — among  others,  Soemund  Sigfusson,  named  the 
"  Savant,"  an  ecclesiastic  of  Iceland ;  Saxo  Grammaticus, 
Provost  of  Roskilde,  in  Denmark ;  and  Snorro  Sturluson, 
member  of  the  hereditary  magistracy  of  Iceland — conceived 
the  idea  of  collecting  the  old  songs  and  stories  of  the  north. 
They  gave  the  significant  names  of  "  Edda,"  that  is  to  say, 
"  great-grandmother,"  and  of  "  Saga,"  which  means  ''  some- 
thing narrated,"  to  most  of  their  collections. 

The  antiquity  of  what  forms  the  most  constant  element  in 
these  poems  and  stories  cannot  be  questioned.  It  is  well  known 
from  direct  historical  evidence  that  the  authors  and  compilers 
took  pains  to  preserve  the  national  tradition,  and  the  spirit 
that  inspired  them.  They  did  not  publish  their  work  as  some- 
thing original  nor  as  a  discovery.  Their  idea  was  to  record 
something  that  was  known  before  their  time  among  the  people, 
which  had  already  made  a  reputation  and  won  fame,  and  which 


ODIN  AND  HIS  FOLLOWERS  13 

had  been  handed  down  from  time  immemorial,  and  without 
doubt  had  its  origin  in  primitive  ages.  The  hand  of  Time  in 
passing  over  these  documents  and  memorials  has,  of  course, 
imparted  to  them  tints  that  can  be  easily  recognised,  but  nothing 
has  altered  them  materially.  If  this  needed  to  be  proved  by 
internal  evidence,  taken  from  the  work  itself  and  traced  out 
in  its  details,  it  could  be  done  by  Social  Science.  These  records 
have,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  preserved  innumerable  features  of  a 
state  of  society  which  Social  Science  can  accurately  reconstruct, 
which  is  harmonious  in  all  its  parts,  and  belongs  to  a  recognised 
genus  and  species,  with  peculiar  modifications,  which  are  in 
accordance  with  the  unchanging  laws  of  social  transformations. 
In  this  case  the  procedure  of  verification  is  similar  to  that  which 
enables  us  to  recognise  the  existence  of  certain  animal  or  vege- 
table species,  no  longer  found  to-day,  by  means  of  impressions 
left  in  the  earth's  strata.  They  actually  did  exist,  because 
they  can  be  scientifically  reconstructed  according  to  the  per- 
manent laws  of  zoology  and  botany.  This  method  of  verification 
can  be  applied  to  history,  and  is  one  of  the  finest  achievements 
of  Social  Science.  Hitherto  historical  criticism  has  remained 
in  the  same  condition  as  that  of  criticism  with  regard  to  certain 
geological  facts  before  anything  was  known  of  the  science  of 
paleontology.  Before  this  science  was  developed,  any  im- 
pressions or  remains  of  organisms  that  were  discovered  buried 
in  rocks  were  carefully  described  in  every  detail,  and  the  exact 
spot  whence  they  were  taken  was  accurately  defined,  but  it 
was  found  not  to  be  always  possible  to  say  whether  they  were 
"  sports  of  Nature "  or  remains  of  organisms  that  had  dis- 
appeared ;  and  there  was  no  method  then  known  for  accurately 
deducing  from  such  fragmentary  indications  the  complete 
form  and  conditions  of  life  of  the  organism  to  which  they 
belonged.  In  the  same  way  historical  criticism  may  actually 
rescue  a  document  from  the  dust  of  Time,  may  neatly  prune 
away  from  it  all  foreign  elements,  and  determine  with  certainty 
its  growth,  its  date,  and  its  place  of  origin  ;  but  when  it  is  a  case 
of  extracting  from  that  document  a  knowledge  of  the  social 
organisation  to  which  it  belongs,  historical  criticism  is  con- 
fronted by  all  the  uncertainty  and  confusion  arising  from 
popular  or  personal  notions  of  what  society  is.  Historical 
criticism  has  failed  to  examine  methodically  the  various  forms 


14  THE  ORIGIN  OF 

of  modern  society,  nor  has  it  subjected  them  to  "  comparative 
anatomy,"  nor  discovered  in  them  "  the  law  of  the  correlation 
of  the  forms  of  their  different  parts,"  and  it  has  not,  therefore, 
been  able  to  reconstruct  in  a  scientific  manner  the  organism 
of  an  ancient  society,  by  piecing  together  its  scattered  features 
which  are  to  be  found  preserved  in  documents.  Social  Science 
has  furnished  us  with  the  complete  and  indispensable  method 
which  historical  criticism  lacked.  We  shall  immediately  pro- 
ceed to  apply  it  to  the  subject  before  us. 

I  cannot  do  better  than  choose  from  among  the  documents 
which  tell  of  the  invasion  of  an  urban,  industrial,  intellectual, 
and  political  movement  into  Scandinavia,  one  which  sums  up 
this  important  fact  in  a  few  words,  and  I  will  quote  it  without 
destroying  its  original  form.  It  is  an  extract  from  Snorro 
Sturluson's  work,  the  Ynglinga  Saga.  J.  J.  Ampere  says  of  it : 
"  It  can  only  have  been  formed  into  the  poetic  whole  which 
Snorro  has  edited  under  the  title  of  Ynglinga  Saga  after  having 
been  handed  down  through  many  generations  and  embodied 
in  many  heroic  songs."  I  will  proceed  to  quote  it  as  an  interest- 
ing piece  of  evidence  of  Scandinavian  antiquity. 

"  The  land  which  lies  to  the  east  of  the  Tanais  (the  Don) 
was  called  in  old  times  Asaland,  or  even  Asaheim — that  is  to 
say,  the  land  or  the  home  of  the  Ases ;  and  the  capital  of  the 
country  bore  the  name  of  Asgard  (dwelling-place  of  the  Ases ; 
the  word  'gaard' — yard,  ward,  garden — is  still  used  in  Norwegian 
to  mean  a  dwelling-place,  composed  of  a  group  of  buildings). 
A  prince  called  Odin  dwelt  in  this  city.  Now  great  sacrifices 
were  performed  there,  and  it  was  the  custom  that  the  twelve 
most  powerful  chiefs  should  attend  to  the  sacrifices  and  ad- 
minister justice  to  the  people,  whence  it  came  about  that  they 
were  called  Diars  or  Drotners — that  is  to  say,  gods  or  lords — and 
that  all  the  people  paid  them  honour  and  obeyed  them.  Odin 
got  the  mastery  over  all  the  rest  by  making  distant  journeys 
and  by  knowing  the  science  of  war,  for  he  had  subjugated  many 
countries  and  kingdoms.  So  fortunate  was  he  in  battle  that 
he  always  returned  victorious  and  laden  with  booty  ;  and  thus 
his  comrades-in-arms  were  persuaded  that  victory  belonged  to 
him  wherever  he  might  chance  to  fight.  When  his  men  went 
to  war  or  embarked  on  some  enterprise  it  was  their  custom  to 
ask  him  to  give  them  a  blessing  by  laying  his  hands  upon 


ODIN  AND  HIS  FOLLOWERS  15 

them,  hoping  in  this  way  to  be  successful  in  all  things.  Further- 
more, if  any  of  them  happened  to  be  in  danger  by  land  or  sea, 
they  straightway  called  upon  the  name  of  Odin,  believing,  in 
all  honesty,  that  he  would  help  them  as  if  he  were  beside  them. 
.  "On  several  occasions  Odin  visited  such  distant  countries 
that  it  took  him  many  years  to  accomplish  his  journeys.  He 
had  two  brothers,  Ve  and  Vitir.  It  was  they  who  governed 
in  his  absence.  On  one  occasion,  when  Odin  had  travelled  to 
a  very  distant  country  and  all  hope  of  his  return  had  been 
abandoned  as  his  absence  had  been  so  prolonged,  his  brothers 
divided  his  inheritance  and  his  kingdom,  and  both  laid  claim 
to  the  hand  of  Frigg,  his  wife.  But  soon  after  Odin  returned 
and  took  back  his  wife. 

' '  Odin  led  his  army  against  the  Vanes  :  but  they  were  on 
their  guard  ;  they  defended  their  country,  and  victory  remained 
in  the  balance.  The  two  people  ravaged  each  other's  lands 
and  wrought  much  damage.  Finally,  weary  of  war  on  both 
sides,  they  held  a  solemn  assembly,  at  which  peace  was  concluded 
and  hostages  were  exchanged. 

"  The  Vanes  gave  Odin  two  of  their  most  powerful  men  as 
hostages — Niord,  the  rich,  and  his  son  Frey.  Odin  set  them 
apart  to  perform  the  sacrifices  to  the  gods,  and  they  were 
called  gods  among  the  Ases.  Niord  had  a  daughter  named 
Freya,  who  was  a  priestess  ;  she  was  also  the  first  who  taught 
the  Ases  the  magic  art  called  Seid,  which  was  much  practised 
among  the  Vanes.  While  Niord  was  living  in  the  land  of  the 
Vanes  he  married  his  own  sister,  in  accordance  with  their  laws, 
and  she  bare  him  these  two  children,  Frey  and  Freya.  But 
among  the  Ases  marriage  was  forbidden  between  people  of 
such  near  relationship. 

"  On  their  side  the  Ases  gave  as  hostages  one  of  their  men 
named  Hnener,  whom  they  thought  was  destined  to  become 
chief,  so  richly  was  he  endowed  with  beauty  and  majesty,  and 
also  a  dwarf  called  Mimir,  the  wisest  of  their  people. 

"  No  sooner  had  Hrener  arrived  in  the  country  of  the  Vanes 
than  they  made  him  their  chief ;  and  Mimir  helped  him  by 
giving  counsel.  But  when  Hsener  held  the  assembly,  in  order 
to  administer  justice  or  transact  any  other  business,  and  had  to 
decide  difficult  questions  in  Mimir's  absence,  it  was  his  custom 
to  say,  '  Let  others  decide  this  matter  !  '  For  this  reason  the 


16  THE  ORIGIN  OF 

Vanes  thought  that  they  had  been  duped  in  the  exchange  of 
hostages,  so  they  seized  Mimir,  cut  off  his  head,  and  sent  it  to 
the  Ases.  Odin  took  the  head,  embalmed  it,  and  by  means  of 
his  enchantments  caused  it  to  talk  with  him  and  reveal  many 
mysteries. 

"  From  the  point  where  the  sun  rises  in  summer  (north-east) 
to  that  where  it  sets  in  winter  (south-west)  there  stretches  a 
long  chain  of  very  high  mountains  (the  Oural  Mountains),  which 
divides  the  kingdom  of  Sweden  (and  its  long  route  through  the 
European  steppe)  from  the  other  kingdoms  (near  which  Odin 
lived  in  the  east).  Not  far  from  these  mountains  to  the  south- 
wards is  the  country  of  the  Turks  (Turkestan) ;  Odin  possessed 
a  large  extent  of  territory  there  (to  the  east  of  the  Don,  according 
to  the  above  statement). 

"  About  this  time  the  Roman  generals  were  scouring  the 
earth,  subjugating  all  the  races  to  their  laws,  whence  it  came 
about  that  several  chiefs  abandoned  their  possessions  (the 
conquest  of  the  east  by  Sulla,  Lucellus,  and  Pompey,  from 
85  to  64  B.C.).  Now,  as  Odin  was  well  versed  in  divination  and 
in  every  kind  of  knowledge,  he  foresaw  that  his  posterity  should 
reign  in  the  north.  For  this  reason  he  left  to  his  brothers  Ve 
and  Vitir  the  government  of  his  city  of  Asgard,  and  went  away 
with  the  rest  of  the  gods  and  a  large  number  of  men.  First  he 
made  his  way  across  the  kingdom  of  Gardarige,  that  lay  towards 
the  west  (the  Russian  and  German  steppe),  and  then  (when 
he  reached  the  north-west  extremity  of  the  steppe)  turned 
towards  the  south,  to  the  Saxon  plain  (now  Hanover  and  West- 
phalia). There  Odin  subdued  many  kingdoms  and  set  his  sons, 
of  whom  he  had  many,  to  defend  the  conquered  land.  Then  he 
went  north  and  took  up  his  dwelling  on  the  seashore,  at  a  place 
which  is  known  to-day  as  Odinso,  in  the  island  of  Fyen. 

"  Thence  he  sent  Gefion  farther  north  beyond  the  straits 
to  search  out  new  lands.  On  the  way  she  went  to  see  Gylfe, 
King  of  Sweden,  who  gave  her  a  large  tract  of  arable  land.  .  .  . 
Odin  perceived  that  it  was  good  land  ;  he  betook  himself  thither 
and  concluded  a  treaty  with  the  King,  for  the  latter  saw  that  he 
had  but  little  power  to  withstand  the  Ases.  For  Odin  and 
Gylfe  competed  in  sorceries  and  charms  of  every  kind,  and  at 
every  contest  the  Ases  were  superior.  Odin  made  his  home 
on  the  banks  of  Lake  Malar,  at  a  place  which  is  called  ancient 


ODIN  AND  HIS  FOLLOWERS  17 

Sigtun  (between  Stockholm  and  Upsala),  and  there  he  raised 
a  magnificent  temple  and  founded  sacrifices  after  the  manner  of 
the  Ases.  He  became  master  of  all  the  land  round  Sigtun,  and 
granted  estates  and  homes  to  all  those  appointed  to  perform 
sacrifices.  Niord  had  his  house  at  Noatun ;  Frey  at  Upsala  ; 
Heimdal  at  Himinberg ;  Thor  at  Thrudoorg ;  Balder  at 
Breidablik  ;  and  Odin  gave  them  all  arable  lands. 

"  Odin  put  into  force  in  his  country  all  the  ancient  laws  of 
the  Ases,  in  which  it  was  decreed  that  the  remains  of  the  dead 
should  be  given  to  the  flames,  .  .  .  that  the  ashes  of  the  funeral 
pyre  should  be  thrown  into  the  sea,  or  covered  with  a  mound 
of  earth.  Funeral  barrows  were  to  be  raised  in  honour  of 
chiefs  and  princes,  so  that  posterity  should  not  forget  them. 
Monumental  stones  were  to  be  set  up  in  memory  of  valiant  men 
who  had  distinguished  themselves  from  the  crowd  by  their 
exploits,  and  this  custom  was  long  preserved.  .  .  . 

"  Throughout  all  Sweden  the  inhabitants  paid  Odin  a  piece 
of  silver  per  head,  in  return  for  which  he  undertook  to  defend 
the  country,  repel  the  enemy,  and  watch  over  the  sacrifices." 

When  I  first  examined  this  great  tradition  which  I  have  here 
abridged  for  the  reader,  I  paused  at  what  is  undoubtedly  its 
most  striking  point,  Odin's  exodus,  an  event  unparalleled  in 
his  history,  the  transplanting  of  his  mighty  household  from  the 
banks  of  the  Don  to  the  Baltic's  northern  shores.  In  this  act, 
which  is  clearly  the  most  prominent  in  the  narrative,  I  recognised, 
above  all,  the  brilliant  action  of  a  leader  of  men  and  a  great 
captain. 

However,  I  did  not  fail  to  notice  that  the  expedition  did 
not  appear  to  the  Goths  like  a  conquest  of  arms.  Odin  did  not 
attempt  to  subdue  them  by  force,  but  to  conciliate  them  by  the 
superiority  of  the  civilisation  which  he  introduced  among  them. 
Accompanied  as  he  was  not  by  the  whole  people  of  Asaland  or 
Asgard  but  only  by  his  chief  comrades  and  a  picked  band  of 
men,  he  did  not  attempt  to  drive  out  the  stout  and  prosperous 
farmers  of  Gothland,  nor  to  dispossess  them,  but  to  enter  into 
partnership  with  them  and  to  make  use  of  them,  while  at  the 
same  time  he  served  them  in  his  own  way.  Thus  we  see  him 
directing  his  energy  towards  the  development  of  a  military 
power,  the  establishment  of  industrial  arts,  the  encouragement 
of  intellectual  culture,  the  organisation  of  religious  functions,  all 

2 


i8  THE  ORIGIN  OF 

of  which  he  did  by  creating  town  centres.  And  as  the  Gothic 
people,  although  they  were  intelligent  and  progressive  in  other 
ways,  lacked  these  arts  and  had  nothing  better  of  their  own 
which  would  be  displaced  by  them,  it  can  easily  be  understood 
that  they  welcomed  them  with  admiration  and  conceived  of 
Odin  as  a  miraculous  being. 

The  military  character  of  Odin  is  manifest  everywhere. 
It  is  the  most  striking  feature  of  his  history.  The  end  of  the 
above  narrative  contains  a  clear  statement  of  the  system  of 
taxation  which  provided  him  with  the  means  necessary  for  the 
defence  of  the  country.  We  shall  read  elsewhere  with  what 
intense  enthusiasm  his  successors  attacked  and  overthrew  the 
German  tribes  in  the  great  "  invasion  of  the  Barbarians." 

The  part  he  played  in  introducing  industrial  arts,  which  led 
to  the  creation  of  a  class  of  artisans  and  merchants,  is  less 
marked  in  the  passage  quoted  above  than  in  the  rest  of  the  Sagas 
and  in  the  Eddas.  It  is,  however,  so  marked  a  characteristic 
of  his  work  that  his  name  is  most  frequently  associated  with  it. 
For  that  reason,  when  people  came  to  deify  the  hero  and  made 
him  the  supreme  god  of  the  Scandinavian  Olympus,  they  did 
not  identify  him  with  Jupiter.  That  honour  was  reserved  for 
his  son  Thor,  whose  work  it  was  to  hurl  the  thunderbolt.  Nor, 
in  spite  of  his  skill  as  a  leader  in  battle,  was  he  identified  with 
Mars.  A  god  named  Tiu  was  so  identified.  But  Odin  was 
identified  with  Mercury,  the  god  of  useful  arts,  of  commerce, 
and  of  bargaining.  And  so,  several  centuries  later,  when  the 
Saxons,  those  worshippers  of  Odin,  translated  into  their  own 
language  the  names  that  the  Romans  had  given  to  the  days  of 
the  week,  they  made  Jeudi  or  Jupiter's  day  into  Thor's  day  or 
Thursday  ;  Mardi  or  Mars'  day  they  turned  into  Tiu's  day  or 
Tuesday ;  while  Mercredi  or  Mercury's  day  they  changed  into 
Odin's  or  Woden's  day,  i.e.  Wednesday.  This  Tacitus  had 
already  observed.  In  writing  of  the  Germans  he  said, 
"  Mercury  is  the  greatest  of  their  gods.  Human  victims  are 
offered  up  to  him,  but  only  animals  to  the  others."  And  in 
another  place  :  "  When  the  conquerors  have  dedicated  the 
hostile  army  to  Mars  and  Mercury,  men  and  horses  and  every- 
thing belonging  to  the  conquered  have  to  be  put  to  death."  1 

That  to  Odin  was  attributed  the  introduction  of  intellectual 
1  De  Mor.  German.,  9;  Annales,  xiii.  57. 


ODIN  AND  HIS  FOLLOWERS  19 

culture  is  unquestionably  proved  by  the  reputation  so  widely 
ascribed  to  him  in  Scandinavian  books  "  of  knowing  the 
runes"  that  is  to  say,  letters  and  the  art  of  writing,  and  even 
of  being  their  inventor.  An  illiterate  people  have  a  special 
reverence  and  admiration  for  the  art  of  writing,  as  the  means 
of  preserving  the  formulae  of  science  and  religion.  Hence  a 
knowledge  of  the  runes  comes  to  be  considered  as  evidence  of 
ability  to  understand  the  ways  of  learning  and  the  mysteries 
of  religion.  The  same  idea  was  expressed  in  the  Middle  Ages 
by  the  phrase,  "  to  be  a  clerk,"  which  meant  that  a  man  was  not 
only  a  member  of  the  ecclesiastical  body,  but  that  he  was  learned, 
and  at  any  rate  knew  how  to  read.  It  is  worth  while  observing 
that  Odin's  wisdom  appears  most  frequently  under  a  form 
which  marks  the  difference  in  character  of  the  two  civilisations, 
Gothic  and  Odinid.  His  wisdom  works  behind  a  veil  of  mysteries 
and  wonders,  and  is  displayed  as  the  effect  of  magic  power. 
That  is  the  sort  of  fascination  that  an  Oriental  chief  or  priest 
would  delight  in  exercising  upon  a  simple  people. 

To  turn  to  tlie  part  Odin  played  in  religion.  The  system  of 
worship  which  he  introduced  from  the  east,  as  we  have  already 
described,  was  certainly  not  long  maintained  :  the  reason  of 
this  will  be  explained  later.  The  most  definite  result  which 
the  appearance  of  this  extraordinary  being  produced  upon  the 
religion  of  the  Scandinavians  seems  to  have  been  to  cause  them 
to  adopt  hero-worship  in  a  more  decided  form  as  a  substitute 
for  a  more  direct  worship  of  divinity,  which  was  at  the  same 
time  more  abstract  and  nearer  to  nature-worship.  Through 
the  influence  of  Odin's  worship  their  religion  seems,  on  the  one 
hand,  to  have  turned  aside  from  the  primary  truth  ;  and  on  the 
other,  owing  to  the  more  positive  and  human  form  it  assumed, 
to  have  acquired  a  more  living  influence  upon  their  minds. 
Odin  came  to  be  worshipped  with  genuine  enthusiasm  by  all 
the  tribes  of  German  origin,  for  his  fame  was  not  slow  in  reaching 
them,  as  we  shall  see. 

Throughout  his  peaceful  conquest  of  the  Goths,  Odin  showed 
so  much  respect  for  their  rights  of  ownership,  that  he  did  not 
set  up  his  headquarters  among  them.  Gothland  must  have  been 
populous  and  fully  cultivated  at  this  time — as  indeed  all  the 
facts  go  to  prove — for  Odin  did  not  find  enough  unoccupied 
land  there  for  a  suitable  home  for  himself  and  his  followers. 


20  THE  ORIGIN  OF 

We  saw  that,  while  he  was  engaged  in  founding  Odense,  he  sent 
an  expedition  to  the  north  beyond  the  borders  of  the  Goths, 
beyond  the  land  now  known  as  Malar  Gotaland,  in  search  of  new 
lands.  There  he  built  his  house  on  the  banks  of  Lake  Malar,  at 
Sigtun,  near  the  strait  upon  which  Stockholm  is  now  situated. 
He  gave  his  companions  pieces  of  land  in  the  neighbourhood. 
Later  on  towns  sprang  up  there,  and  among  others  the  well- 
known  town  of  Upsala. 

He  found  a  type  of  people  in  that  country  quite  unlike  the 
Goths.  Everything  goes  to  show  that  they  were  inferior  to 
the  Goths,  but  they  lived  at  peace  with  them  and  considered 
them  to  be  near  relations.  They  were  the  Suiones,  according  to 
statements  made  by  the  Romans,  and  their  name  has  survived 
in  the  ancient  province  of  Swealand,  which  was  their  territory, 
and  in  Sweden,  called  Sueonia  in  the  Middle  Ages.  The  reason 
why  the  name  of  this  inferior  race  has  survived  rather  than 
that  of  the  Goths,  is  that  the  centre  which  Odin  chose  has  been 
recognised  through  all  the  ages  as  the  most  favourable  place 
for  the  industrial  organisation  of  the  country.  The  mineral 
wealth  of  the  country,  still  indicated  by  the  reputation  enjoyed 
by  Dannemora  iron,  is  concentrated  there.  A  glance  at  a 
geographical  map  of  the  products  of  Sweden  will  show  the 
superiority  of  the  position.1  We  cannot  help  recognising  in 
Odin  that  genius  for  founding  cities  which  history  ascribes  to 
him  when  we  see  him  arrive  in  Sweden  and  without  hesitation 
mark  out  the  site  of  the  city  which  was  to  be  the  Queen  of  the 
great  Scandinavian  peninsula.  He  seems  to  have  been  the 
Peter  the  Great  of  that  remote  period. 

To  what  circumstance  was  due  the  original  distinction 
between  the  Goths  and  the  Suiones,  the  primitive  Swedes  ? 
How  did  they  come  there  ?  The  idea  is  that  they  did  not 
follow  the  route  via  the  great  Germanic  plain  like  the  Goths, 
but  that  the)^  went  round  the  Baltic  and  the  Gulf  of  Finland  by 
the  east  and  entered  Scandinavia  by  the  Archipelago  of  Aland, 
which  is  situated  opposite  the  country  where  Odin  found  them. 
Now  the  journey  across  the  forest  regions  of  Central  Russia 
would  have  had  the  same  deteriorating  influence  upon  the 
Suiones  as  it  had  upon  the  Fins,  the  ancient  Finlanders,  who 
came  by  that  very  road  :  they  were  totally  unlike  the  Fins. 
1  See  Atlas,  Vidal-Lablache,  map  104,  figs.  1  and  2. 


ODIN  AND  HIS  FOLLOWERS  21 

On  the  contrary,  they  had  so  many  characteristics  in  common 
with  the  Goths  that  it  is  difficult  to  believe  that  they  could  ever 
have  been  far  separated  from  them.  I  am  inclined  to  think 
that  they  travelled  in  the  van  of  the  Goths,  and  so  travelled 
farther  north,  where  the  soil,  as  we  have  seen,  was  just  as  good 
as  in  the  southern  regions.  If  they  were  less  clever  at  agri- 
culture than  the  Goths,  it  was  undoubtedly  due  to  the  fact 
that  as  they  led  the  way  in  winning  Scandinavia  from  the  Fins, 
and  continually  had  to  defend  their  northern  frontier  against 
that  race  of  hunters  whom  they  were  pressing  back  into  the 
extreme  north,  they  were  obliged  to  devote  more  time  to  the 
art  of  war.  Hence  it  came  about  that  their  fusion  with  Odin's 
warlike  followers  was  more  complete,  and  this  has  led  some 
critics  to  think  that  they  were  the  people  Odin  brought  with 
him. 

As  the  home  he  had  chosen  was  in  their  midst,  he  had  every 
opportunity  for  exercising  his  military  skill,  and  indeed  was 
obliged  to  do  so.  He  had  to  wage  war  incessantly  against 
the  Fins.  The  Eddas  and  Sagas  are  full  of  stories  of  the 
great  struggle.  It  was  a  constant  source  of  annoyance  to  the 
Ases,  as  they  could  not  bring  it  to  an  end,  nor  enjoy  their  new 
possessions  in  peace  as  they  had  done  formerly  in  happy  Asaland. 
This  is  the  reverse  side  of  Odin's  brilliant  epic.  This  restless 
tribe  of  hunters,  fishers,  and  pillagers  harassed  him  continually. 
They  could  never  be  caught,  and  could  be  used  only  as  slaves, 
as  they  were  scarcely  capable  of  serving  as  labourers.  National 
tradition  has  avenged  the  great  Scandinavian  god's  bad  fortune 
by  making  all  the  evil  gods  into  Finnish  gods  or  representing 
them  as  dwelling  among  the  Fins.  Tradition  paints  them  with 
the  characteristics  and  manners  of  those  small,  ugly  beings, 
with  all  their  cunning  and  their  quarrelsome  nature,  and 
pictures  them  as  uttering  threats  from  their  haunts  at  the 
bottom  of  fiords,  in  the  heart  of  the  woods,  and  behind  the  ice 
of  mountain  peaks,  whence  they  rush  out  like  wolves  and  sea- 
serpents,  and  to  which  they  scamper  back  with  all  speed  to  hide 
themselves,  mocking  at  their  enemies,  when  they  have  cunningly 
accomplished  their  evil  deeds. 

In  the  Edda  there  is  a  most  singular  song,  the  Song  of  Rig, 
which  gives  a  sort  of  summary  in  a  most  picturesque  form  of 
the  different  types  and  relationships  of  the  three  civilisations, 


22  THE  ORIGIN  OF 

Finnish,  Gothic,  and  Odinic.     I  cannot  resist  quoting  it  in  an 
abridged  form. 

Heimdal,  one  of  the  gods  of  the  Ases,  travelling  under  the 
name  of  Rig,  reached  a  certain  country  by  the  seashore.  He 
there  came  upon  three  dwellings,  one  after  the  other,  each  of 
which  was  inhabited  by  a  man  and  wife,  to  whom  a  son  was 
born  after  his  visit.  The  couple  that  occupied  the  first  house 
bore  the  name  of  Great-grandfather  and  Great-grandmother 
(they  were  Fins).  They  regaled  their  guest  with  coarse  bread 
and  a  hunk  of  veal.  When  a  son*  was  born  to  them  they  called 
him  Slave  (Throell)  :  "  He  was  black,  the  skin  on  his  hands  was 
rough,  his  knees  were  bent,  his  fingers  thick,  his  face  ugly,  his 
back  rounded,  and  his  nails  long.  When  he  grew  strong,  he 
spent  his  time  in  barking  trees  and  gathering  bundles  of  sticks 
to  carry  to  the  house.  A  wayfaring  woman  came  to  the  place  : 
the  soles  of  her  feet  were  torn  and  bleeding,  her  arms  burnt  by 
the  sun,  and  her  nose  flattened  down.  Her  name  was  Servant." 
These  two  miserable  beings  were  united,  and  from  their  union 
sprang  the  race  of  slaves.  The  names  of  their  sons  and  daughters 
were  significant;  they  were  opprobrious  names:  the  Gloomy 
One,  the  Coarse  Man,  the  Quarreller,  the  Idler,  the  Blockhead ; 
and  of  women  :  the  Slow  One,  the  Slut,  etc. ;  their  duties  were 
"  to  make  hedges,  spread  manure  on  the  fields,  look  after  the 
pigs,  watch  the  goats,  and  dig  out  peat." 

Rig  came  to  the  second  house.  His  new  hosts  were  called 
Grandfather  and  Grandmother  (they  were  Goths).  "  The 
husband  was  constructing  a  loom  ;  his  beard  was  well  kempt ; 
his  hair  was  arranged  in  a  tuft  on  his  forehead ;  his  dress  was 
neat.  A  chest  adorned  the  room.  The  wife  was  turning  the 
spinning-wheel ;  she  was  mending  some  clothes."  She  bore  a 
son,  who  was  named  Peasant  (Karl).  "  He  was  wrapped  in 
linen.  His  hair  was  reddish,  his  complexion  highly  coloured, 
his  eyes  brilliant.  He  began  to  grow  and  gather  strength  ; 
he  learned  to  tame  bulls,  to  make  ploughs,  to  build  houses  of 
wood,  to  make  barns,  to  construct  chariots,  and  to  plough. 
He  took  to  himself  a  wife.  She  was  clothed  in  goatskin  and 
carried  a  bunch  of  keys.  Her  name  was  '  Diligence.'  Their 
children  were  called  Man,  Boy,  Farmer,  Artisan,  Subject,  etc.; 
from  them  sprang  the  race  of  peasants." 

Rig  went  to  the  third  house.    It  was  situated  so  as  to  face 


ODIN  AND  HIS  FOLLOWERS  23 

the  south.     The  couple  who  lived  in  it  were  called  Father  and 
Mother  (they  were  Odin's  descendants).     "  The  husband,  who 
was  seated,  was  stretching  the  cord  for  a  bow ;  he  was  bending 
the  wood  for  it,  and  was  fashioning  arrows.     His  wife  was 
weaving  some  cloth  of  thread.     Her  complexion  was  whiter 
than  snow,  and  her  eyebrows  were  most  beautiful.     Rig  sat 
down  to  partake  of  their  meal.     She  spread  a  cloth  of  em- 
broidered linen  on  the  table.     She  took  some  light  rolls,  and 
some  pure  cheeses,   and  put  them  on  the  cloth.     She  then 
brought  some  dishes,  ornamented  with  silver  and  full  of  venison, 
bacon,  and  roast  birds,  and  set  them  on  the  table.     The  wine 
was  in  tankards,  and  the  goblets  were  mounted  with  silver. 
They  talked  and  conversed  till  daylight  faded."     When  their 
son  was  born  he  was  wrapped  in  silk  and  sprinkled  with  lustral 
water.     They  called  him  Noble  (Jarl)  :  "  His  hair  was  fair,  his 
cheeks  rosy,  his  eyes  as  bright  as  those  of  a  small  snake."     He 
grew  up  in  the  house  ;  he  learned  to  wield  the  lance,  to  fashion 
bows  and  arrows,  to  hurl  darts,  to  draw  the  sword,  to  swim,  to 
ride  horses,  to  hunt  with  hounds.     The  traveller,  Rig,  taught 
him  the  runes,  and  intended  him  to  become  the  owner  of  heredi- 
tary lands,  of  noble  estates  and  ancient  houses.     The  young 
warrior  galloped  by  mountain  and  valley,  put  the  people  to 
the  sword,  and  conquered  the  country.     He  was  sole  ruler  of 
eighteen    "  gaards " — eighteen    settlements.     He   divided    his 
riches,  giving  rings  and  fragments  of  gold  bracelets  to  some, 
and  fleet  horses  to  others.     He  wedded  the  daughter  of  the 
Baron  (Herser),  and  their  children  were  called  Son,  Heir,  Scion, 
Descendant.     "  They  pursued  the  same  occupations  as  their 
father,   they  tamed  horses,   made  curved  shields,   sharpened 
javelins,  wielded  the  lance."     A  brother  was  born,  who  was 
called  Chief — King  (Konr).     "  He  spent  his  time  in  learning  the 
runes — the  runes  of  time,  the  runes  of  eternity.     He  understood 
the  songs  of  birds.     He  knew  how  to  save  men's  lives,  to  turn 
the  edge  of  swords,  to  calm  the  sea,  to  quench  fire,  to  assuage 
and  quiet  pain.     He  had  the  strength  of  eight  men." 

It  would  be  impossible  in  a  rapid  sketch,  drawn  from  life, 
to  give  a  better  picture  of  a  state  of  society  long  since  passed 
away.  The  above  sketch  serves  far  better  than  many  long 
descriptions  to  make  the  reader  grasp  the  three  social  and 
physical  types — the  Fins,  the  Goths,  and  the  descendants  of 


24  THE  ORIGIN  OF 

Odin,  to  which  the  author,  a  faithful  historian,  has  given  the 
names  of  Great-grandfather,  Grandfather,  and  Father,  to  show 
in  what  order  of  time  they  reached  Scandinavia. 

The  researches  we  have  just  made,  summary  though  they 
are,  have  given  us  a  very  clear  idea  of  the  salient  features  of 
Odin's  character  as  he  appeared  after  he  had  settled  among 
the  Goths  and  become  a  regular  part  of  their  world.  The  auth- 
enticity of  these  characteristics  is  established  in  the  first  place 
by  their  mutual  harmony ;  in  the  second,  by  their  agreement 
with  the  facts  supplied  by  history,  with  the  investigations  of 
criticism,  and  with  the  demands  of  Social  Science — that  is  to 
say,  with  the  conditions  necessary  for  the  normal  explanation 
of  the  alleged  social  facts. 

But  the  honour  of  having  accomplished  a  more  difficult 
piece  of  work  rests  entirely  with  M.  Philippe  Champault.  He 
has  made  researches  into  the  social  conditions  which  pro- 
duced Odin,  and  in  which  he  lived  before  he  moved  into 
Scandinavia.  His  work  is  of  intense  interest  for  the  reason 
that  his  researches  go  back  to  the  sources  of  that  civilisation 
which  Odin  introduced  among  the  Goths. 

The  reader  should  not  fail  to  peruse  M.  Champault' s  work 
on  this  subject  in  La  Science  Sociale,  under  the  title  of 
"  Le  personnage  d'Odin  et  les  Caravaniers  iraniens  eri  Ger- 
manie."  l  But  I  cannot  resist  mentioning  some  of  its  most 
valuable  suggestions,  in  order  to  shed  a  clearer  light  on  what 
we  already  know  about  Odin,  and  to  show  the  original  conditions 
of  which  he  was  the  product,  in  the  same  way  as  we  have  already 
shown  what  he  originated. 

After  employing  all  the  resources  of  erudition  and  of  Social 
Science  to  obtain  as  complete  an  idea  as  possible  of  this  extra- 
ordinary personage,  M.  Champault  recognised  in  the  hero's 
whole  way  of  life  and  manner  of  acting  the  characteristics  and 
methods  of  organisation  peculiar  to  the  great  caravan  leaders, 
who  used  the  roads  through  the  steppes  to  carry  on  trade  with 
very  remote  places.  He  found  that  the  great  Germanic  plain, 
which  had  been  traversed  by  slowly  moving  migratory  tribes, 
who  never  retraced  their  steps,  was  also  used  periodically  by 
vigorous  chieftains  and  powerful  social  organisations,  of  which 
Odin  and  his  following  of  Ases  were  only  eminent  types,  as  a 
1  La  Science  Sociale,  vol.  xvii.  p.  398  ff.  and  vol.  xviii.  p.  25  If. 


ODIN  AND  HIS  FOLLOWERS  25 

thoroughfare  by  means  of  which  they  were  able  to  carry  out 
commercial  enterprises  with  despatch. 

This  fact,  though  hitherto  ignored,  connected  as  it  is  with 
the  history  of  this  Europe  of  ours  in  the  latter  part  of  the  ancient 
era,  rivets  our  attention  upon  the  activity  of  a  very  striking 
piece  of  social  mechanism,  of  which  but  little  notice  has  been 
taken :  I  mean  the  commerce  that  was  carried  on  in  ancient 
times  between  extraordinarily  remote  places  in  the  face  of 
enormous  difficulties. 

A  study  of  the  classics  gives  but  a  small  idea  of  commerce 
in  ancient  times.  A  study  of  modern  literature  would  give 
hardly  a  better  knowledge  of  the  great  industrial  and  commercial 
phenomena,  which  are  nevertheless  the  most  determining  cause 
of  our  systems  of  society,  and  of  the  movements  by  which  they 
are  swayed.  But  Social  Science  recognises  that  the  part  played 
by  commerce  between  remote  places  in  all  the  epochs  of  the 
world  is  of  the  greatest  importance.  By  the  aid  of  Social  Science 
we  can  study  races  which  certain  complex  circumstances  of 
place  have  kept  till  now  in  the  primitive  conditions  of  early 
civilisation ;  and  from  the  knowledge  gained  by  a  study  of 
these  races,  who  may  still  be  observed,  we  can  form  an  adequate 
idea  of  similar  races  that  have  disappeared.  Through  Social 
Science  it  has  been  discovered  that  these  now  antiquated 
societies,  which,  like  so  many  ancient  societies,  seem  isolated 
and  impenetrable,  have  from  time  immemorial  had  commercial 
intercourse  with  remote  countries  which  till  comparatively 
modern  times  remained  almost  unknown  except  in 
fables. 

The  largest,  the  strongest,  and  the  most  ancient  of  the 
primitive  organisations  of  commerce  between  remote  places 
which  have  been  brought  to  our  cognisance  by  examples  still 
extant,  is  without  doubt  that  of  the  caravan  leaders  of  the 
great  steppes.  It  is  to  this  type  that  Odin  belonged.  A 
description  of  one  of  the  finest  extant  specimens  of  this  kind 
of  organisation  can  be  read  in  La  Science  Sociale.  It  deals 
with  the  powerful  sect  of  Senussiyeh,  which  extends  over  more 
than  half  the  steppes  or  deserts  of  Northern  Africa,  and  was 
founded  in  the  first  half  of  this  century  by  an  inhabitant  of 
Mostaghanem,  Seyyid  Es-Senussi,  a  modern  Odin  ;  this  sect 
received  as  members  nearly  all  the  partisans  of  the  notorious 


26  THE  ORIGIN  OF 

Madhi  of  Khartum.1  An  ancient  model  of  the  same  form  of 
society  is  furnished  by  the  brotherhood  or  celebrated  college 
of  the  Priests  of  Ammon,  who  lived  at  Thebes  and  in  the  great 
Lybian  oasis,  and  were  the  original  founders  of  Egyptian  power. 
M.  de  Preville  has  published  a  learned  and  most  enlightening 
article  on  this  subject  in  La  Science  Sociale?  Thanks  to  M. 
Champault,  we  shall  now  be  able  to  place  the  brotherhood  of 
the  Ases,  with  Odin  as  their  chief,  in  the  same  category.  I  refer 
the  reader  to  the  author  for  all  the  documents  upon  which  his 
history  is  based.  I  will  limit  myself  to  his  main  conclusions, 
which  he  has  deduced  with  such  accuracy,  that,  once  indicated 
as  they  have  been,  they  will  find  ample  proof  in  what  we  already 
know  about  Odin. 

Asgard,  the  centre  of  Odin's  activity,  must  have  been  situated 
near  the  place  where  the  lower  Don  most  nearly  approaches  the 
lower  basin  of  the  Volga.  The  place  is  marked  by  the  modern 
towns  of  Kalatch  and  Tzaritzyn,  the  former  on  the  Don,  the 
latter  on  the  Volga.  "  To  the  east  of  the  Don,"  according  to 
the  indication  in  the  Ynglinga  Saga,  there  is  a  place  just 
suited  for  a  town  that  is  in  contact  with  the  plains  of  Turkestan, 
which  the  same  document  describes  as  stretching  to  the  south 
of  the  Urals.  The  vine  cannot  be  cultivated  farther  north 
than  this  point,  a  fact  of  importance,  since  the  Eddas  represent 
the  Ases  as  using  wine.  A  glance  at  a  physical  map  of  Russia 
will  reveal  unmistakably  the  "  Salt  Steppe  "  to  the  south  of 
the  Urals  opposite  Asgard,  and  the  vines  which  cover  the  land 
round  the  supposed  site  of  the  city.3 

It  ivould  be  impossible  to  place  Asgard  farther  north,  because 
it  would  not  then  come  under  the  conditions  defined  by  tradition  ; 
nor  farther  south,  in  the  plain  lower  down  the  river  Don,  because 
that  is  a  region  of  unbroken  steppe  where  towns  do  net  flourish 
now  any  more  than  they  did  in  bygone  ages.  A  piece  of 
regularly  watered  land,  suitable  for  agriculture  and  for  fruit- 
bearing  trees,  is  indispensable  for  a  stationary  tribe  settled 
among  nomads.  In  such  a  place,  where  food  and  shelter  can 
be  obtained  in  a  well-cultivated  and  well-planted  country,  houses 

1  La  Science  Sociale,  vol.  ix.  p.  383   ff.  ;    Le  mouvement  madhiste   et  sa 
nouvelle  Evolution,  by  M.Paul  Danzanvilliers. 

2  Vol.  ix.  p.  549  if.:  UEgypte  ancienne  ;  la  colonisation  de  la  vallee  du  Nil. 

3  See  Atlas,  Vidal-Lablache,  maps  83  and  114,  fig.  1. 


ODIN  AND  HIS  FOLLOWERS  27 

are  sure  to  spring  up  in  all  directions.  This  is  exactly  the  kind 
of  place  we  have  indicated  as  the  site  of  Asgard.  All  the  oases, 
whether  in  the  centre  of  the  steppes  or  on  their  confines,  have 
similar  features.  Burnaby's  description  of  Khiva  (A  Ride  to 
Khiva)  is  much  the  same,  and  gives  some  idea  of  the  ancient 
cities  of  the  land  of  Turkestan,  which,  extended  as  far  as  the 
lower  basin  of  the  Don  in  ancient  days,  when  it  was  damper  and 
more  thickly  covered  with  grass. 

It  would  be  still  less  admissible  to  place  Asgard  on  the  shore  of 
the  Sea  of  Azoff,  or  of  the  Black  Sea,  because  all  the  characteristics 
of  the  Odinid  civilisation  show  that  its  inhabitants  had  not 
come  under  the  influence  of  the  Greek  colonies  which  were 
spread  along  those  coasts.  Without  taking  into  account  the 
impassable  bogs  of  the  Palus  Mseotis,  the  steppe  which  stretched 
to  the  north  of  those  colonies  was  not  a  suitable  place  for  the 
activity  of  the  Greeks.  It  was  a  region  that  receded  far  inland, 
where  their  influence  never  penetrated,  and  which  formed  a 
barrier  they  never  really  crossed.  Asgard  must  therefore  be 
placed  beyond  that  steppe. 

A  very  important  piece  of  evidence  comes  to  support  these 
considerations.  At  the  very  place  we  have  indicated  known 
now  as  the  Province  of  the  Don,  where  the  river  makes  a  great 
bend  towards  the  Volga,  Herodotus  describes  a  group  of  Scythians 
whom  he  distinguishes  from  all  the  others  who,  as  nomads  or 
husbandmen,  then  peopled  the  southern  plain  of  Russia,  by 
the  title  of  "Royal "  :  A  "  They  look  upon  the  others,"  he  says, 
"  as  their  slaves."  2  It  cannot  be  denied  that  the  epithet  of 
"  Royal "  corresponds  very  well  with  what  the  Scandinavian 
story-teller  says  of  the  Ases  :  "  They  were  called  Lords,  and  all 
the  people  paid  them  honour  and  showed  them  obedience." 
As  to  the  name  of  Scythians,  far  from  being  an  obstacle  to  the 
identification  of  the  Royal  Scythians  with  the  followers  of 
Odin,  it  is  of  assistance,  for  we  now  know  that  it  is  only  a  varia- 
tion of  the  name  of  Goths  :  Goths,  Getse,  Jutes,  Scythians  are 
different  pronunciations,  and  the  connection  between  them  can 
be  easily  seen.  These  Scythian  followers  of  Odin  therefore, 
even  when  they  were  in  the  east,  would  have  borne  the  same 
name  as  the  Goths  only  with  a  variation,  and  the  Goths  would 

1  See  Atlas,  Vidal-Lablache,  maps  4  and  5. 

2  Herodotus,  History,  iv.  20,  22,  and  7  in  fine. 


28  THE  ORIGIN  OF 

merely  have  kept,  under  the  appropriate  form,  the  true  generic 
name  of  all  the  tribes  to  which  the  Komans  conceived  the  idea 
of  giving  the  name  of  Germans. 

But  what  is  far  more  interesting  here  is  the  relationship  which 
the  names,  and  everything  else,  reveal  between  the  Goths  and 
the  followers  of  Odin.  In  the  Song  of  Rig  it  is  clearly  indicated 
by  the  physiological  types,  the  Grandfather  and  the  Father — 
that  is  to  say,  the  Goth  and  the  follower  of  Odin  bear  so  close 
a  resemblance  to  one  another  that  they  seem  to  be  distinguished 
rather  by  a  difference  in  education — rustic  in  the  one  case, 
aristocratic  in  the  other — than  by  a  difference  of  birth.  And 
their  resemblance  is  heightened  still  more  by  the  contrast 
between  them  and  the  Great-grandfather,  the  Firi.  The  relation- 
ship between  the  Goths  and  the  followers  of  Odin  is  similarly 
helpful  in  explaining  how  it  was  that  a  fusion  took  place  so 
easily  between  two  races  whose  social  characters  were  so  diver- 
gent :  the  one,  that  of  the  Goths,  being  simple  and  natural, 
moulded  by  the  north,  by  country  life  and  liberty  ;  the  other, 
that  of  the  followers  of  Odin,  being  ostentatious  and  complex, 
moulded  by  the  east,  by  the  civilisation  of  towns,  and  by  the 
habit  of  domination.  Thus  little  by  little  do  we  find  an  explana- 
tion for  everything  in  this  wonderful  story. 

Among  the  races  that  we  mentioned  just  now — the  Goths, 
the  Jutes,  the  Germans,  the  Getse,  the  Scythians — we  must  not 
omit  the  Massagetes,  the  Thyssagetes,  and  the  Bastarnes,  who 
are  from  the  same  stock  and  belong  to  the  German  family.  The 
Massagetes  inhabited  the  land  to  the  east  of  the  Aral  Sea,  and 
the  Thyssagetes  that  to  the  north  of  the  Caspian.  The  Bastarnes 
dwelt  between  the  Carpathians  and  the  marshes  of  the  Pripet 
in  the  passage  leading  from  the  Russian  steppe  to  the  steppe  of 
Lower  Germany.  In  this  way  the  mighty  German  race  spread 
across  the  ancient  world  in  a  splendid  sweep  from  the  last  slopes 
of  Pamir  to  the  borders  of  the  regions  of  perpetual  ice,  and 
formed  an  unbroken  link  between  the  Massagetes  and  Thyssa- 
getes of  the  Aralo-Caspian  basin,  and  the  Scythians  and 
Bastarnes  of  the  basin  of  the  Black  Sea,  and  the  Germans  and 
Goths  of  the  basin  of  the  Baltic.1 

These  powerful  races  remained  absolutely  outside  the 
influence  of  Greek  and  Roman  civilisation  until  the  first 
1  See  Atlas,  Vidal-Lablache,  maps  4,  5  and  16,  17. 


ODIN  AND  HIS  FOLLOWERS  29 

centuries  of  our  era.  The  Greeks,  as  I  said,  were  checked  by 
the  steppe.  As  for  the  Romans,  they  halted  in  front  of  the 
Hercynian  Forest,  which  stretched  from  the  Harz,  a  mountain 
range  in  Hanover,  where  its  name  survives,  as  far  as  the  eastern 
extremity  of  the  Carpathians,  covering  with  its  gloomy 
shade  all  the  hills  of  Central  Germany.  Greece  and  Rome  had 
gradually  exercised  an  influence  upon  three  races — the  Pelasgic, 
Barbarian,  and  Celtic — which  had  followed  the  three  parallel 
routes  of  the  Mediterranean,  the  northern  coast  of  Africa,  and 
the  valley  of  the  Danube  with  its  prolongation  into  the  western 
slope  of  Gaul.  But  the  entire  Germanic  race,  though  it  was 
a  near  neighbour  of  those  masters  of  the  world  along  its  most 
extensive  frontier,  nevertheless  escaped  their  influence  owing 
to  the  intervening  barrier  formed  by  steppe  and  forest.  And 
the  great  man  who  brought  them  civilisation  was  Odin. 

The  situation  of  the  city  of  Asgard  reveals  the  source  from 
which  that  civilisation  was  drawn.  Odin's  town,  so  well  placed 
on  the  Germans'  high  road,  had  before  it  in  a  straight  line  to 
the  south  the  central  door  of  the  Oriental  world,  the  Pass  of 
Dariel  in  the  Caucasus.  On  the  other  side  of  that  door  lay  the 
glittering  countries  of  Asia  Minor,  Mesopotamia,  and  Persia. 

It  was  a  masterly  position.  To  right  and  left  of  the  city, 
stretching  away  to  an  extraordinary  distance,  lay  the  open, 
uniform  route  of  the  steppes,  inhabited  by  a  people  unvisited 
by  traders,  who  would  be  the  exclusive  customers  of  the  towns- 
people, and  who  were  of  their  own  race.  In  front  lay  a  magnifi- 
cent stretch  of  igneous  land,  excellent  for  vegetation  of  every 
kind  and  full  of  opportunities  for  the  engineer,  favourable  for 
social  development  and  for  the  production  of  wealth  of  all 
kinds.  The  idea  of  carrying  the  produce  of  the  one  country 
to  the  other  was  one  of  the  highest  order  from  the  commercial 
point  of  view. 

Moreover,  the  above  conjecture  as  to  the  situation  of  Asgard, 
the  source  of  the  civilisation  which  Odin  made  it  his  interest  to 
propagate,  is  further  corroborated  by  the  fact  that  Scandinavian 
art  and  thought  in  every  branch  show  the  influence  of  Oriental 
forms  and  of  forms  peculiar  to  that  part  of  the  east  represented 
by  Western  Asia.  No  one  can  deny  it.  Archaeology  and 
literature  acknowledge  and  assert  it.  The  runic  alphabet  is 
neither  Greek  nor  Roman,  but  was  brought  by  the  Greeks, 


30  THE  ORIGIN  OF 

Romans,  and  Celts,  from  the  east,  and  modified  for  their  own 
use.  The  story  of  the  Ynglinga  Saga  is  full  of  accounts  of 
commercial  enterprises  carried  on  by  Odin  in  order  to  secure 
Oriental  products.  One  of  his  longest  journeys  was  to  the 
Persian  Gulf.  He  tried  to  conquer  the  people  dwelling  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  Lake  Van  in  Armenia — the  Vanes.  He 
seems  to  have  acquired  some  lands  on  their  frontier,  and  they 
were  incessantly  ravaging  each  other's  territory.  What  could 
he  have  gained  by  this  ?  The  neighbourhood  was  rich  in  iron 
mines.  The  Chalybes,  the  foremost  blacksmiths  of  the  world, 
lived  there.  Did  not  we  see  that  at  the  termination  of  the  war 
the  Ases  had  to  give  up  Mimir  as  a  hostage,  whose  head  even 
after  death  taught  Odin  many  things  ?  Scandinavian  tradition 
represents  the  cunning  Mimir  as  armed  with  an  ever-swinging 
hammer,  and,  like  the  Cyclops,  adorned  with  a  single  bright  eye 
in  the  middle  of  his  forehead,  representing  in  a  picturesque 
manner  the  miner's  lamp.  It  is  very  difficult  not  to  believe 
that  Odin  had  the  working  of  certain  mines  in  these  regions 
under  his  control,  and  that  he  combined  the  professions  of 
caravan  leader  and  director  of  ironworks,  especially  when  we 
observe  that  the  use  of  iron  in  Scandinavia  coincides  with  his 
arrival  in  that  country  and  that  the  mineral  wealth  of  a  district 
of  Sweden  determined  his  choice  of  land  there. 

Clearly  as  every  point  in  the  situation  of  the  town  helps 
to  prove  that  it  was  a  place  of  commerce,  still  more  clearly  does 
the  character  of  its  inhabitants  support  this  view. 

Permanent  settlements  of  sedentary  tribes  in  the  midst  of 
nomads  infallibly  become  resting-places.  They  form  centres 
where  travellers  may  replenish  their  food  supplies  and  find  rest 
and  safety.  Hence  the  more  capable  inhabitants  find  not  only 
the  means  of  enriching  themselves  by  trading  and  hospitality, 
but  also  opportunities  of  forming  a  business  connection  and 
acquiring  influence  among  all  those  who  pass  to  and  fro  over 
the  steppe. 

There  soon  springs  up  among  them  the  idea  of  enlarging 
their  nucleus  of  power  by  extending  the  benefit  of  security 
beyond  the  town,  into  the  desert.  Their  first  care  is  to  form 
a  union,  so  that  their  spheres  of  influence  may  not  clash,  a 
thing  which  would  ruin  the  enterprise  at  its  very  beginning. 
Their  next  step  is  to  try  and  establish  a  system  of  brotherhoods 


ODIN  AND  HIS  FOLLOWERS  31 

and  of  exchange  of  pledges  among  the  groups  of  nomads  who 
are  their  customers.  They  find  a  bond  in  the  religious  brother- 
hood. With  this  as  a  solid  foundation,  they  form  an  association 
in  the  common  interest  between  themselves  and  their  customers 
and  among  their  customers,  the  object  of  which  is  to  guarantee 
the  safety  of  themselves  against  one  another  throughout  the 
steppe,  and  the  safety  of  all  the  members  of  the  corporation 
against  every  assailant.  This  kind  of  association  has  sprung 
up  spontaneously  in  all  ages  in  countries  where  there  are 
steppes,  from  the  time  of  the  priests  of  the  oases  of  Ammon 
and  of  Thebes  to  that  of  the  modern  Khouans  Senussiyehs  of  the 
Sahara  and  the  Soudan,  and  from  the  Etruscan  Lucumons,  in 
all  probability,  to  the  Lamas  of  Tartary.  It  represents  the 
whole  of  Odin's  religious  organisation,  with  its  twelve  brother 
priests  and  that  magic  benediction  which  he  gave  to  those 
setting  out  on  an  expedition,  who  believed  that,  wherever  they 
might  be,  they  were  assured  of  his  protection  as  much  as  if  he 
were  beside  them.  In  this  way  we  come  to  understand  the 
figure  that  Odin  presents  as  a  patriarch  of  venerable  mien  who 
affords  protection  more  by  his  strength  of  character,  his  authority, 
and  his  religious  activity,  than  by  his  arms. 

As,  however,  on  occasions  this  corporate  body,  this  pro- 
tectorate, needs  a  material  sanction,  some  visible  form  of  power 
upon  which  it  can  fall  back,  arms  are,  after  all,  of  sovereign 
importance  and  their  power  is  centralised,  as  is  the  case  in 
every  army,  in  the  hands  of  a  single  leader,  who  is,  of  course, 
Odin.  Odin  is  priest  and  warrior  ;  the  Ases,  his  companions, 
hardly  appear  at  all  except  as  priests. 

But  it  is  not  enough  to  consider  Asgard  as  a  military  centre 
as  well  as  a  commercial  and  religious  one.  We  must  also 
picture  to  ourselves  that  here  and  there  in  the  steppe  were 
stations  which,  after  the  model  of  the  centre,  had  a  triple 
character — military,  religious,  and  commercial.  These  per- 
manent stations,  that  served  for  defence  and  as  points  for 
concentration  as  well  as  for  halting-places,  were  indispensable 
to  the  regular  working  of  the  great  association  and  for  the 
protection  of  the  interests  of  nomad  life.  We  see  Odin  occu- 
pied in  setting  them  up  in  all  directions  in  "  his  journeys  "  ; 
he  placed  one  or  other  of  his  sons  in  them  "  for  the 
protection  of  the  country."  He  was  still  occupied  with  this 


32  THE  ORIGIN  OF 

work,  according  to  the  Ynglinga  Saga,  in  his  last  journey 
into  Germany,  when  he  succeeded  in  pushing  forward  as  far 
as  Saxony  to  establish  a  station.  In  M.  Champault's  article 
there  is  an  interesting  list  of  stations,  which  appear  from  their 
ancient  geographic  names  to  have  been  connected  with  the 
Ases — as,  for  example,  Azagarion  near  Kieff,  Azcaucalis  on  the 
Vistula,  etc.1 

While  Odin  was  perpetually  on  the  move  owing  to  his 
military  duties,  his  brothers  and  the  Ases  remained  at  Asgard 
or  in  Asaland.  It  is  clear,  too, "that  Odin's  wife  Frigg  played 
an  important  part  in  his  absence.  When  he  was  believed  to 
have  perished  in  an  expedition  she  was  eagerly  sought  in  mar- 
riage by  those  aspiring  to  succeed  him,  for  the  sake  of  material 
advantages.  For  in  the  system  of  society  we  have  just  described, 
the  caravan  leader's  personal  property  was  intrusted  to  the 
care  of  the  wife,  and  remained  in  the  possession  of  her  and  her 
family  on  her  husband's  death.  That  this  was  the  case  is  proved 
beyond  a  doubt  by  the  fact  that  among  certain  races  of  this 
type,  for  example  among  the  Armenians  of  Van,  according  to 
the  Ynglinga  Saga,  the  brothers  used  to  marry  their  sisters 
when  they  became  widows  in  order  to  get  the  property  thus 
left  to  them.  This  fact  is  also  another  proof  of  the  existence 
of  a  system  of  caravan  traffic  in  Odin's  time. 

Another  fact  which  shows  the  position  which  women  occupied 
in  this  state  of  society  is  the  existence  of  the  Walkyries,  those 
armed  daughters  of  the  goddesses,  wives  of  the  Ases,  who  brought 
aid  in  battle,  and,  if  necessary,  bore  the  brunt  of  it  themselves. 
This  followed  naturally  from  the  fact  that  they  had  to  be  on 
guard  with  their  mothers,  when  the  men  were  too  few  for  the 
defence.  In  races  in  which  the  men  were  periodically  away 
on  expeditions,  owing  to  the  exigencies  of  caravan  life,  the 
women  were  usually  trained  to  be  warriors  like  the  Amazons 
of  history. 

The  above  proofs  of  the  various  characters  in  which  Odin 
played  his  part  add  peculiar  weight  to  the  reasons  for  identi- 
fying him  with  Mercury,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  this  identifica- 
tion determines  beyond  a  doubt  the  meaning  and  dominant 
character  of  the  facts  we  have  just  observed.  We  are  dealing 
with  a  real  "  merchant."  Odin  is  not  only  the  god  of  com- 

1  La  Science  Sociale,  vol.  xviii.  41. 


ODIN  AND  HIS  FOLLOWERS  33 

merce,  because  he  is  the  father  of  industrial  arts  and  of  handi- 
craftsmen, but  he  practises  commerce  himself,  and  on  such  a 
vast  scale  that  he  trades  all  over  the  world,  and  Mercury  is 
obliged  to  put  wings  to  his  feet.  And  poetry  has  endowed 
him  with  a  horse  with  eight  legs. 

However  much  the  noise  of  the  expedition  which  trans- 
planted Odin  from  one  end  of  the  domain  of  the  German  race 
to  the  other  echoed  in  the  land,  and  however  swiftly  the  fame 
and  worship  of  the  hero  may  have  spread  among  the  people, 
yet  the  authenticated  statement  that,  from  the  time  of  Tacitus, 
Odin,  the  Mercury  of  the  Germans,  was  known  to  be  their  great 
god,  naturally  makes  us  think  that  "  the  notion  "  of  Odin, 
"  the  idea  "  of  what  his  character  represents,  "  the  deeds  " 
which  make  him  live,  must  date  far  back  in  the  minds  and  in 
the  lives  of  those  races.  Odin  must  have  had  predecessors 
who  foreshadowed  his  fame,  his  apotheosis,  his  elevation  above 
the  ancient  gods.  His  was,  in  all  probability,  a  personality 
that  was  already  known  before  the  man  appeared  who  gave 
it  a  finished  expression  and  in  whom  it  became  a  living  reality. 
Odin  the  Great  must  have  been  to  other  Odins  what  the  Great 
King  was  to  our  other  French  kings — i.e.  the  highest  expres- 
sion of  kingship,  when  that  institution  had  reached  its  most 
complete  form.  Odin,  the  Odin  we  have  studied,  is  certainly 
an  historical  individuality,  but  the  name  which  is  connected 
with  his  fame  is  that  of  a  function,  like  the  names  of  Pharaoh 
and  Tzar.  His  own  personal  name  is  Sigge.  According  to 
Scandinavian  literature,  Odin  or  Woden  means  "  travelling, 
walking  "  ;  the  word  is  composed  of  the  Indo-European  roots 
"  od  "  and  "  oad,"  and  of  some  termination  corresponding  to 
our  participles  "  ant,  ing,  ens."  It  is  not  very  difficult,  I 
think,  to  recognise  Odin  under  this  title  of  "  traveller,"  since 
we  use  the  same  term  to  denote  those  who,  among  us  sedentary 
people,  are  still  representatives  of  nomad  life  in  commerce : 
si  parva  licet  componere  magnis  ?  Scandinavian  mythologies 
agree  in  admitting  that  there  were  several  Odins.  M.  Cham- 
pault  has  dealt  with  this  point  in  his  work  entitled,  "  Pre*- 
d6cesseurs  d'Odin."  l  I  will  limit  myself  to  quoting,  as  he  does, 
the  evidence  of  Herodotus,  who  even  at  that  time  mentions 
traffickers  among  the  Royal  Scythians  who  made  such  long 

1  La  Science  Sociale,  vol.  xvii.  p.  411. 

3 


34  THE  ORIGIN  OF 

journeys  that  they  were  obliged  to  use  seven  languages  if  they 
went  in  certain  directions.1 

There  is  one  final  consideration  which  confirms  all  the  evidence 
showing  that  Odin  was  a  great  caravan  leader.  It  is  this  :  that 
the  fact  that  he  was  a  caravan  leader  gives  a  clear  explanation 
of  his  extraordinary  exodus  into  Scandinavia.  For  although  an 
Oriental  prince  in  the  face  of  a  Roman  invasion  would  naturally 
have  thought  of  transporting  his  treasure,  his  servants,  and  his 
court  far  from  the  eagle's  clutches,  and  would  have  attempted 
to  gather  to  himself  a  new"  people  in  a  remote  land,  yet 
Odin's  removal  to  the  farthest  extremity  of  Europe,  which  was 
carried  out  with  so  much  resolution,  and  his  subsequent  settle- 
ment, which  was  accomplished  with  comparative  ease,  would 
remain  somewhat  of  a  problem,  if  it  were  not  remembered  that 
he  simply  transferred  the  seat  of  his  commerce  from  one  end  of 
the  line  to  the  other.  Moreover,  the  motives  for  the  migration 
assume  great  weight  when  we  remember  that  Nearer  Asia,  one 
of  the  two  poles  of  Odin's  commerce,  to  which  the  commercial 
station  of  Asgard  owed  its  origin,  was  confiscated  after  the 
Roman  conquest  for  the  advantage  of  Roman  commerce.  The 
reader  should  look  at  a  map  showing  the  progress  of  Roman 
arms  in  the  east  shortly  before  the  Christian  era,  in  order  to  see 
how  very  closely  the  place  where  Asgard  stood  was  being  sur- 
rounded and  hemmed  in  at  that  time.2 

It  was  in  the  early  part  of  the  first  century  B.C.  that  Roman 
power  began  to  extend  to  the  east.  And  it  was  at  that  epoch — 
and  the  coincidence  is  significant — that  there  appeared  in  Scan- 
dinavia certain  signs  of  a  new  civilisation  :  among  others,  the 
use  of  iron,  which  superseded  bronze,  and  the  cremation  of  the 
dead,  which  went  on  side  by  side  with  ordinary  burial — two 
facts  for  which  no  local  cause  can  account  and  which  Odin's 
arrival  entirely  explains. 

We  can  no  longer  question  the  authenticity  of  the  tales 
repeated  by  Scandinavian  tradition  when  we  see  that  in  a  story 
which  pays  as  little  attention  to  making  its  events  probable  or 
capable  of  proof  as  the  Ynglinga  Saga,  tradition  agrees  in  all 
points  with  the  data  of  history  and  the  facts  drawn  from  the 
observation  of  social  phenomena.  The  places,  the  conditions  of 

1  Herodotus,  Hist.  iv.  24. 

2  See  Atlas,  Vidal-Lablache,  maps  16  and  17. 


ODIN  AND  HIS  FOLLOWERS  35 

life,  the  need  for  social  organisation,  the  dates,  everything 
combines  to  prove  their  truth,  and  the  more  we  seek  for  the 
reasons  of  things,  the  more  we  find  them  in  the  alleged  facts. 

Moreover,  it  all  holds  together.  When  Odin  was  cut  off  from 
commerce  with  the  east,  he  fell  back  altogether  upon  his  occupa- 
tions of  metal-working  and  warfare.  Therefore  the  two  cha- 
racters of  smith  and  warrior  are  those  by  which  he  is  best 
known  in  Scandinavia  and  upon  which  local  tradition  has  laid 
most  stress.  It  is  clear  that  local  tradition  looks  upon  Odin  as  a 
creator  of  industries  and  a  lover  of  war.  That  he  was  a  caravan 
leader  appears  only  from  the  facts  of  his  earlier  life,  which  have 
been  faithfully  handed  down,  and  from  his  well-deserved  title 
of  the  "  Mercury  "  of  the  Germans. 

Here  again  is  an  example  of  the  precision  with  which  social 
laws  operate.  Among  Odin's  institutions,  those  that  were 
created  by  the  commercial  necessities  of  Asgard  had  but  a  short 
life  in  Scandinavia.  The  functions  of  the  twelve  great  gods  of 
the  Ases,  the  heads  of  the  great  brotherhood  of  the  steppe,  had 
no  historical  development.  When  men  could  no  longer  make 
profits  by  commerce,  for  which  peace  is  essential,  they  had  to 
rely  on  the  profits  of  war.  The  boldest,  most  vigorous  lived  the 
most  securely,  and  cared  little  for  peace  or  for  brotherhoods. 
Each  of  those  who  are  called  the  heirs  of  the  "  Father  "  in  the 
Song  of  Rig,  and  whom  I  shall  more  simply  call  the  Odinids, 
created  a  separate  position  for  himself,  which  the  song  describes 
to  perfection.  By  the  Odinids  are  meant  the  descendants  of 
Odin's  comrades  or  those  who  adopted  their  way  of  life.  Battle 
was  the  order  of  the  day.  There  was  no  thought  of  anything  but 
conquest.  And  the  Song  of  Rig  sounds  like  a  patriotic  song, 
and  like  the  shout  of  a  social  revolution,  when  we  read  its  final 
words,  "  The  King,  Konr,  was  studying  the  runes  for  his  use 
and  profit  ?  when  his  quiet  was  disturbed  by  a  crow.  It  told 
him  he  had  better  mount  a  horse  and  make  armies  roll  in  the 
dust.  It  told  him  of  Dan  and  of  Danpr,  who  were  good  warriors 
and  clever  sailors,  and  owned  better  lands  than  his  !  "  With 
his  dying  breath  Odin  earnestly  exhorted  his  followers  to 
reconquer  the  east.  This  was  the  very  last  utterance  of  the 
dispossessed  caravan  leader ! 

His  wish  was  accomplished.  We  shall  see  the  Odinids, 
before  two  centuries  have  elapsed  (170  A.D.),  begin  to  extend 


36  THE  ORIGIN  OF 

the  empire  of  the  Goths  from  the  base  of  the  Baltic  to  the  banks 
of  the  Don,  and  there  divide  to  the  right  and  to  the  left  of  the 
Dnieper  into  Visigoths  and  Ostrogoths,  Western  and  Eastern 
Goths.  The  torrent  of  the  Huns  hurled  them  back  towards 
the  west,  upon  Greece  and  Italy.  They  forgot  Asgard  and 
brilliant  Asia  altogether,  and  Rome  became  the  object  of  their 
expeditions,  for  which  they  enlisted  first  the  Goths  and  then 
all  the  tribes  of  the  German  and  Saxon  plains  in  turn,  from  the 
Vandals  in  the  east  to  the  Saxons  and  Franks  in  the  west.  They 
were  the  great  promoters  of  the  Barbarian  invasion. 

Thus  it  was  Odin — the  Odin  who  had  been  so  long  enshrined 
in  the  legends  of  the  north,  that  caravan  leader  who  fled  before 
the  blows  that  Pompey  aimed  at  Mithridates — it  was  he  who, 
in  the  person  of  his  descendants,  accomplished  the  vast  and 
terrible  plan  which  the  hatred  of  the  potentate  of  Asia  Minor 
had  conceived  for  the  destruction  of  Rome. 

Our  gratitude  is  due  to  Social  Science  for  having  rescued 
Odin  from  the  misty  dreamland  of  mythology  and  restored 
him  to  history.  He  has  taken  his  place  there  ;  he  will  never 
leave  it. 

We  shall  soon  see  the  great  events  we  have  just  mentioned 
unfold  before  the  natural  force  of  social  laws.  And  when  the 
great  shocks  which  broke  up  the  ancient  world  subside  and 
give  place  to  a  new  order  of  things,  we  shall  be  able  to  state 
with  certainty  that  those  who  established  it  were  not  the  fine 
Gothic  peasants,  nor  Odin's  powerful  warriors,  but  that  race 
of  unobtrusive  Gothic  emigrants  whose  social  development  we 
have  been  studying.  But,  at  the  same  time,  what  did  they  owe 
to  Odin  ?  We  are  now  sure  of  the  answer — 

1.  By  developing  industrial  arts  and  intellectual  culture 
among  the  Goths,  the  Odinid  invasion  produced  two  results : 
it  made  the  emigrants  more  capable,  and  it  made  them  more 
numerous.     For  emigration  goes  on  more  rapidly,  and  affects 
larger  numbers  among  families  with  patriarchal  traditions,  the 
more  the  capacities  of  each  individual  are  developed. 

2.  By  supplying  the  Goths  with  chiefs  for  their  expeditions, 
the  Odinid  invasion  provided  the  emigrants  with  leaders  when 
they  became  too  numerous  in  their  new  territory.     These  chiefs 
were  at  once  useful  and  troublesome  to  the  emigrants  ;  they 
were  peculiarly  useful  to  them  in  leading  them  to  the  conquest 


ODIN  AND  HIS  FOLLOWERS  37 

of  Western  Europe,  but  they  became  troublesome  when  they 
conceived  the  idea  of  ruling  them  in  the  conquered  lands,  and 
of  adopting  to  this  end  the  remains  of  the  shattered  Roman 
institutions. 

Now  that  we  have  seen  what  the  emigrants  inherited  at 
their  birth  and  what  elements  they  brought  from  the  eastern 
slope  of  Scandinavia,  we  must  see  what  the  peculiar  type  of 
country  that  they  found  on  the  western  slope  contributed 
towards  their  development. 


CHAPTER   III 
THE  SEACOAST  FISHERMEN  OF  NORWAY 

HISTORY  reveals  certain  well-defined  circumstances  in  the 
world's  progress  which  have  caused  a  decided  change 
in  its  direction,  and  which  are  called  the  "  decisive  factors  of 
history." 

Sometimes  the  causes  which  operate  at  those  points  belong 
to  an  order  of  things  which  can  be  perceived  only  by  the  mind ; 
at  others,  and  more  frequently,  they  are  material  and  tangible. 

When  a  journey  by  boat  south  -  westwards  along  the 
Norwegian  shore  brings  us  round  the  gradual  turn  of  the 
coast  to  the  end  of  the  Stavanger  Fiord,  formed  by  the  last 
buttresses  of  the  magnificent  Lang-Field  Mountains,  and  when 
we  graze  the  immense,  almost  vertical  cliffs,  we  can  say, 
in  proper  terms  and  in  a  very  literal  sense,  that  we  see  with 
our  eyes  and  touch  with  our  hands  one  of  the  most  extraordinary 
"  decisive  factors  of  history."  By  making  the  journey  along 
that  very  coast,  from  the  eastern  slope  of  the  great  western 
chain  of  Scandinavian  mountains  to  the  western,  the  Gothic 
emigrants  brought  about  the  greatest  change  that  the  world 
has  witnessed  in  the  natural  development  of  society,  the  trans- 
formation of  the  patriarchal  into  the  particularist  family. 

The  western  slope  of  Scandinavia,  from  the  point  I  have 
just  mentioned  to  the  plateau  of  Trondhjem,  and  from  the 
north  of  the  plateau  of  Trondhjem  to  the  extreme  north  of  the 
slope,  presents  an  absolutely  unique  physical  formation.  It 
is  not  surprising  that  something  should  have  happened  there 
which  happened  nowhere  else.  From  our  knowledge  of  the 
past,  and  from  all  we  know  of  the  things  within  the  world's 
compass,  we  can  deduce  the  two  following  points  :  On  the  one 
hand,  the  Gothic  emigration  produced  the  particularist  form 
of  society  there,  and  there  only ;  and  on  the  other,  among  all 

38 


FISHERMEN  OF  NORWAY  39 

the  races  of  the  particularist  type  which  spread  at  the  present 
day  as  far  as  the  Antipodes,  there  is  not  a  single  one  which 
does  not  trace  its  remote  ancestors  to  the  western  slope  of 
Scandinavia.  This  is  an  important  fact,  the  knowledge  of 
which  is  due  solely  to  Social  Science.  It  was  first  surmised  and 
pointed  out  by  Le  Play.  Later  on  I  was  able  to  investigate  it; 
and  it  has  been  verified  as  a  fact.  I  will  summarise  it  here. 

But  before  beginning  the  analysis  of  the  phenomenon  it 
will  be  a  good  thing  to  give  a  rough  notion  and  a  preliminary 
view,  as  it  were,  of  the  two  elements  which  form  its  basis. 
Western  Scandinavia  is  unique  owing  to  the  two  following 
circumstances  : — 

1 .  The  richest  part  of  the  great  submarine  plateau  of  Western 
Europe  borders  on  the  coast  of  Norway,  from  Stavanger  as  far 
as  the  other  side  of  North  Cape — that  is  to  say,  that  near  its 
coast  and  parallel  with  it  there  stretches  an  elevated  plain 
under  water,  a  broad  band  which,  if  it  emerged,  would  increase 
Norwegian  territory  by  half,  without  changing  its  form.  It  is 
as  if  Norway  were  doubled  beneath  the  water  ;  as  if  there  were 
a  second  Norway  beside  the  first,  but  flat  and  submerged. 
The  name  "  Norwegian  submarine  terrace  "  gives  a  good  idea 
of  the  configuration  of  the  region  in  question.  At  no  point 
in  the  platform  is  there  any  break  worth  mentioning.  At  one 
place  (to  the  north-west  of  Cape  Stad,  where  the  North  Sea 
and  the  Atlantic  join)  it  is  so  absolutely  smooth  for  a  distance 
of  seventy-five  miles,  that  if  it  were  to  rise  above  water,  a 
railway  track  with  a  gradient  not  exceeding  '06  inches  per  foot 
could  be  laid  upon  it. 

This  Norwegian  submarine  terrace  is  at  a  depth  of  only 
54  to  82  fathoms  beneath  the  sea's  surface.  To  the  west  and 
north  it  rises  above  the  steep  slopes  of  the  Atlantic  and  the 
Arctic  Ocean,  which  descend  to  depths  of  546  and  1913  fathoms. 
On  the  south,  beyond  the  place  where  the  sea  narrows  between 
the  two  nearest  capes  of  Norway  and  Scotland,  it  is,  on  the 
contrary,  dominated  by  a  higher  terrace,  by  a  more  steeply 
inclined  plane,  which  is  only  49  to  13  fathoms  below  the 
surface.  These  are  its  definite  boundaries. 

As  I  have  said,  it  forms  part,  or,  rather,  is  an  annex  of  the 
great  submarine,  semicircular  plateau  which  serves  as  a  buttress 
to  Western  Europe.  This  plateau  appears  in  the  angle  of 


40  THE  SEACOAST 

the  Bay  of  Biscay,  juts  out  from  the  west  coast  of  France  for 
a  distance  varying  from  24  to  62  miles,  forms  the  bottom  of 
the  whole  of  the  English  Channel,  envelops  the  British  Isles 
with  a  broad  band,  as  it  does  France,  and  stretches  under 
the  North  Sea  and  the  whole  of  the  Baltic.1 

But  the  point  that  chiefly  distinguishes  the  Norwegian 
terrace  from  the  rest  of  the  plateau  is  the  unrivalled  abundance 
of  fish  that  frequent  it.  In  the  aquatic  world  it  is  a  "  station  " 
of  the  first  order.  Its  superiority  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the 
main  current  of  warm  sea-water,  known  as  the  Gulf  Stream, 
passes  over  its  whole  length.  This  fact  has  exercised  so  con- 
siderable an  influence  upon  the  social  constitution  of  Norway 
that  it  is  important  to  know  something  about  it.  Besides, 
it  is  one  of  the  most  patent  examples  of  the  vast  scale  on  which 
natural  conditions  are  ordered  so  as  to  call  forth  man's  activity 
and  hedge  it  round. 

The  Gulf  Stream  is  one  of  the  supreme  agents  in  the  organisa- 
tion of  the  northern  world,  and  it  has  its  origin  in  the  region 
of  the  Equator.  When  I  think  how  it  comes  across  the  path 
of  our  emigrants  on  the  Norwegian  coast,  and  what  an  influence 
it  has  upon  them,  I  cannot  help  making  a  comparison  between 
the  magnificent  movement  of  the  ocean  currents  which  come 
up  from  the  south  and  the  far-off  west,  and  this  great  current 
of  Germanic  tribes  which  flows  in  an  opposite  direction  from 
the  south-east ;  and  when  I  embrace  in  one  glance  these  two 
absolutely  different  forces,  whose  combined  action  has  pro- 
duced so  wonderful  a  result,  I  am  struck  by  the  large  propor- 
tions of  the  spectacle  which  Social  Science,  like  all  the  sciences, 
often  suddenly  discloses  to  the  mind  after  having  made  it  pass 
through  the  tiny  avenues  of  minute  observation. 

The  Gulf  Stream  is  formed  in  the  Atlantic  on  both  sides  of 
the  equatorial  line  by  the  action  of  the  trade-winds  which  are 
constantly  blowing  from  Africa  and  drive  an  enormous  volume 
of  water  that  has  long  been  heated  by  the  tropical  sun  nearer 
and  nearer  to  the  northern  coast  of  Brazil  towards  Guiana 
into  the  Caribbean  Sea,  and  then  into  the  Gulf  of  Mexico. 
After  entering  the  gulf  from  the  south  by  the  Yucatan  Channel, 
the  mighty  current  makes  a  circuit  there  surrounded  by  land, 

1  See  Alias  manuel,  Hachette,  map  8.     See  the  hypsometric  maps  of  Europe 
and  France  ;  Schrader's  Atlas,  maps  7  and  11. 


FISHERMEN  OF  NORWAY  41 

and  its  temperature  continues  to  rise  above  the  average  tem- 
perature of  the  ocean.  It  flows  out  on  the  east  through  the 
straits  of  Florida,  passes  round  the  peninsula,  and  travels 
parallel  to  the  coast  of  North  America.  There  the  sudden  out- 
ward curve  of  the  continent  throws  it  back  across  the  Atlantic 
in  a  north-easterly  direction  to  Ireland,  Scotland,  and  Norway. 

The  Gulf  Stream  produces  its  most  remarkable  effects  at 
this  end  of  its  immense  journey,  for  which  reason,  as  I  said, 
it  may  be  considered  as  one  of  the  supreme  agents  in  the  organi- 
sation of  the  northern  world,  and  should  be  studied  in  this 
connection.  A  map  of  the  northern  hemisphere  will  show  a 
line  indicating  how  far  the  icebergs  detached  from  the  North 
Pole  come  south,  and  it  will  be  seen  that  this  line  descends 
as  far  as  the  35th  degree  of  latitude  on  the  American  coast — 
that  is,  as  far  as  Cape  Hatteras  in  North  Carolina  (which  is  a 
southern  state  :  it  is  at  the  same  latitude  as  Southern  Algiers) 
—while  it  goes  northwards  with  a  great  curve,  round  Norway 
and  beyond  the  North  Cape  to  about  midway  between  it  and 
Spitzberg,  about  the  75th  degree  of  latitude — an  enormous 
recoil  to  the  north.  The  Gulf  Stream  keeps  back  these  floating 
icebergs  and  melts  them,  and  it  keeps  the  sea  round  Norway 
free  from  ice  in  winter,  whereas  round  Sweden,  in  the  Gulf  of 
Bothnia,  and  even  in  the  Baltic,  the  sea  is  blocked  by  ice.1  The 
temperature  of  the  sea  often  exceeds  that  of  the  air  in  Norway 
by  25  degrees  centigrade,  a  phenomenon  that  is  not  found 
elsewhere,  and  which  is  all  the  more  extraordinary  because 
the  atmosphere  there  is  not  so  cold  as  it  is  at  other  places  of 
the  same  latitude.  The  air  itself  borrows  much  of  its  warmth 
from  the  Gulf  Stream ;  the  isothermal  line  describes  a  circuit 
round  the  country  similar  to  the  line  of  the  icebergs,  and  the 
climate  of  Norway  is  classed  as  temperate.2 

It  is  owing  to  the  very  perceptible  warmth  of  the  waters  of 
the  Gulf  Stream,  even  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  North  Pole, 
that  the  fish  of  extraordinarily  prolific  kinds  whose  habitat 
is  in  the  northern  seas  find  the  Norwegian  submarine  bank 
an  unparalleled  place  for  spawning,  even  in  the  depths  of  winter. 
This  is  the  so-called  "  undiscoverable  bank." 

1  See  Atlas,  Vidal-Lablache,  map  57,  the  dotted  line  indicating  the  limit  of 
icebergs  ;  and  also  Atlas  manuel,  Hachette,  map  7. 

2  See  Atlas,  Vidal-Lablache,  map  57 ;  Foncin's  Atlas  g&n&ral.  map  57. 


42  THE  SEACOAST 

The  codfish  and  the  herring  are  the  two  most  important 
kinds  of  fish  that  frequent  the  bank. 

Their  first  visit  to  the  bank,  when  they  deposit  their  spawn, 
lasts  from  the  end  of  December  or  the  beginning  of  January 
till  the  end  of  March  or  the  beginning  of  April. 

But  whence  do  they  come  ?  And  how  do  they  happen  to 
come  there  ? 

Professor  Sars,  a  learned  Norwegian,  who  was  employed 
by  the  Government  to  make  investigations  concerning  the 
marketable  fish  of  Norway,  searched  for  the  place  from  which 
they  came.  Up  to  that  time  it  was  a  point  upon  which  very 
little  was  known.  His  researches  were  not  without  success. 
They  were  published  in  memoranda  addressed  to  the  Norwegian 
Secretary  of  State  for  the  Home  Department  from  1864  to 
1893.  According  to  Sars,  "  the  codfish  is  not,  as  has  been 
long  believed,  a  strong  swimmer  scouring  the  immense  wastes 
of  the  deep ;  it  is,  on  the  contrary,  a  comparatively  sedentary 
species,  which  lives  the  whole  year  on  the  western  slope  of  the 
Norwegian  submarine  plateau.  It  comes  to  the  top  of  the 
plateau  in  winter  because  at  the  spawning  period  it  seeks 
warmer  water  and  needs  an  approximate  temperature  of  5 
degrees  centigrade.  The  comparative  results  of  fishing  in  1880 
and  1881  on  the  portion  of  the  bank  opposite  the  department 
of  Romsdal,  as  well  as  other  observations,  have  been  found 
to  support  this  opinion.  In  February  and  March  1880,  when 
the  temperature  of  the  sea  at  a  depth  of  54  fathoms  con- 
tinued at  4  and  8  degrees  above  freezing  point,  the  fishing 
results  were  excellent ;  more  than  nine  and  a  half  millions 
of  codfish  were  caught.  The  following  year,  when  the  tem- 
perature of  the  sea  at  the  same  depth  sank  to  3  and  2  degrees 
above  freezing  point,  the  returns  were  less  by  half.  These 
variations  of  temperature  are  produced  by  modifications  in 
the  arrangement  of  the  currents."  (See  Charles  Rabot's 
book.1) 

The  importance  of  the  Gulf  Stream  is  thus  shown  by  Sars' 
methodical  observations.  The  fecundity  of  the  Norwegian 
fishing  bank  is  due  to  this  warm  current.  All  benefits  are 
attributable  to  it,  whereas  everything  prejudicial  is  attributable 
to  elements  which  counteract  its  action.  The  researches  of 

1  Aux  fiords  de  Norvege  et  aux  forcls  de  Suede,  p.  147. 


FISHERMEN  OF  NORWAY  43 

Sars,  continued  by  Dr.  Hjort,  tended  to  establish  the  fact 
that  the  variations  in  the  beneficent  influence  of  the  Gulf  Stream 
are  due  to  the  adverse  intervention  of  a  variable  current  of 
cold  fresh  water  which  comes  from  the  Baltic,  bringing  the 
discharge  of  the  rivers  in  autumn  and  the  melted  snow  in 
spring,  with  the  result  that  the  heat  of  the  water  above  the 
Norwegian  bank  is  lowered  and  the  sea  is  made  less  salt  both 
by  the  winter  and  by  the  summer  waters. 

As  for  the  herring,  the  conditions  it  requires  are  analogous 
to  those  I  have  just  described,  and,  like  the  cod,  it  is  rot,  accord- 
ing to  Sars,  "a  native  of  the  great  ocean  depths,  as  was  supposed; 
on  the  contrary,  it  lives  in  the  surface  waters  of  the  open  sea. 
In  all  probability  the  herring,  which  in  winter  frequents  the 
south-western  coast  of  Norway,  has  its  habitat  in  the  part  of 
the  ocean  between  Scotland,  Iceland,  and  Norway.  All  the 
shoals  of  herring,  indeed,  come  from  the  north-west ;  at  a 
distance  of  eighty  miles  from  the  coast  navigators  have  observed 
them  swimming  invariably  in  that  direction.  In  midwinter 
the  herrings  that  have  been  dispersed  in  the  open  sea  collect 
together  and  advance  in  enormous  shoals  towards  the  sub- 
marine plateau  to  deposit  their  spawn.  Those  which  come 
to  the  north-west  of  Norway,  to  Tromso,  probably  have 
their  habitat  farther  north.  According  to  Sars,  the  shoals 
of  herrings  that  come  to  different  parts  of  the  coast  of 
Northern  Europe  would  thus  each  have  a  different  place  of 
origin."  1 

The  reader  must  imagine  these  immense  shoals  of  fish 
arranged  in  orderly  fashion  about  the  Norwegian  bank,  some 
distributed  over  its  slopes,  others  all  along  its  horizontal  surface. 
He  will  then  have  a  clearer  idea  of  the  way  in  which  this  radiating 
centre  acts. 

But  we  have  not  yet  mentioned  the  whole  force  of  its  attrac- 
tions, nor  everything  that  it  owes  to  the  Gulf  Stream.  The 
fish  do  not  come  to  it  merely  to  hibernate  and  lay  their  eggs  ; 
in  summer  and  autumn  they  find  it  a  place  for  feasting,  and 
the  abundance  of  food  attracts  them  to  stay  or  sometimes 
to  return  there  in  much  larger  numbers.  "  The  codfish,"  says 
Broch,  "  collect  in  large  shoals,  and  come  near  the  land,  either 
to  lay  their  eggs  or  to  find  food."  In  another  passage  he  says, 

1  Rabot,  p.  151. 


44  THE  SEACOAST 

"  There  are  two  fishing  seasons  for  herrings  :  the  winter  season, 
which  extends  over  the  first  months  of  the  year,  when  the 
herring  approaches  the  coast  to  lay  its  eggs ;  and  the  summer 
season,  which  extends  over  the  summer  and  autumn  months, 
when  it  nears  the  coast  in  search  of  food."  l  A  recent  well- 
informed  traveller  in  those  parts  adds  the  following  explana- 
tion :  "  The  fish  that  hatch  from  the  spawn  remain  on  the 
coast  for  about  a  year,  and  then  swim  gradually  towards  the 
open  sea.  They  would  finally  desert  the  coast  completely 
were  it  not  that  certain  circumstances  retain  them  and  even 
attract  other  shoals  from  the  open  sea.  In  seasons  of  calm 
(corresponding  to  the  fine  months  of  autumn  and  summer, 
mainly  from  June  to  September)  the  currents  carry  towards 
the  coasts  of  Norway  an  incalculable  mass  of  animalcules, 
upon  which  the  fish  feed.  The  arrival  of  this  manna 
keeps  the  young  fish,  that  were  about  to  set  out  for  the 
deep  sea,  in  these  latitudes,  and  at  the  same  time  entices 
back  from  the  open  those  that  had  already  emigrated. 
This,  then,  is  the  reason  of  the  so-called  summer  fishing 
season."  2 

What,  then,  is  this  delicate  fare  ?  It  is  what  is  called  in 
Norwegian  the  "  aat "  (pronounced  ot).  "  It  consists,"  says 
Broch,  "  of  small  shrimps  (copepodes),  small  annelides, 
and  a  few  mollusks.  It  is  found  in  enormous  quantities 
on  the  coast."  This,  then,  is  another  benefit  brought 
by  the  Gulf  Stream.  Le  Play  says,  "  Fish  do  not  only  feed 
on  smaller  species  of  their  own  kind  ;  they  are  constituted 
so  as  to  be  able  to  assimilate  infinitely  small  animalcules 
which  exist  in  all  sea-water,  and  are  more  or  less  in  a 
state  of  dissolution.  These  marine  animalcules  increase  with 
extraordinary  rapidity  in  warm,  tropical  waters.  The  Gulf 
Stream,  which  is  laden  with  them,  is  an  essentially  alimentary 
current."  3 

So  the  two  distinct  causes  of  attraction  are  these  :  the 
warmth  and  the  nutritive  qualities  of  the  Gulf  Stream,  which 
divide  the  year  between  them  as  regards  the  fishing  on  the 

1  Dr.  Broch,  Le  royaume  de  Norvege  et  le  peuple  Norvegicn.     A  report  to 
the  Universal  Exhibition  of  Paris,  1878,  pp.  371,  381. 

2  Rabot,  p.  153. 

3  Lc  Play,  Ouvriers  europecns,  vol.  iii.  p.  39. 


FISHERMEN  OF  NORWAY  45 

Norwegian  bank,  and  "  renew  the  season,"  as  an  impresario 
would  say ;  the  warmth  causes  the  winter  season,  and  the 
abundance  of  sea  products  the  summer  season.  Though  each 
season  may  be  said  to  have  "  its  height,"  yet  it  must  not  be 
forgotten  that  except  in  cases  where  large  apparatus  is  used 
in  fishing,  or  where  fishing  is  done  on  a  large  scale,  fish  are 
superabundant  at  all  times.  Moreover,  the  two  seasons  are 
separated  by  so  short  an  interval  that  the  one  joins  on  to  the 
other.  Indeed,  the  winter  fishing  is  also  called  the  spring 
fishing,  and  the  summer  fishing  is  prolonged  by  a  so-called 
autumn  fishing. 

Let  us  leave  the  sea  for  a  time  and  go  inland.  We  shall  still 
find  the  sea  there,  even  in  the  middle  of  the  land. 

I  said  above  that  the  unparalleled  formation  of  the  land  of 
Norway  was  the  result  of  the  combination  of  two  fundamental 
factors.  We  have  just  seen  the  first  factor  in  all  its  details, 
which  I  shall  define  as  the  northern  submarine  bank  bathed  by 
the  Gulf  Stream.  The  second,  which  combines  in  action  with 
the  first,  is  the  precipitous  fiord. 

2.  Before  studying  the  second  factor  in  detail  it  will  be 
a  good  thing  to  take  a  bird's-eye  view  of  it. 

To  begin  with,  what  strikes  one  most  is  the  contrast  which 
the  western  slope  of  Scandinavia  presents  to  the  eastern.  The 
typical  district  of  the  eastern  slope  is  Gotland  or  Gcetaland  and 
Swealand — that  is  to  say,  Southern  Sweden.  "It  is,"  saysBroch, 
"  a  country  of  plains,  which,  as  regards  its  structure  and  the 
nature  of  its  surface,  is  comparable  to  the  Danish  isles.  The  cha- 
racteristic type  of  the  western  slope  is  the  Norwegian  coast  from 
Stavanger  to  North  Cape,  excluding  the  plateau  of  Trondhjem." 
Broch  says  of  it,  "It  is  the  rockiest  part  of  rocky  Norway  : 
a  representation  of  it  in  relief  would  reveal  nothing  but  rugged 
slopes,  or  rather,  actual  precipices,  which  rise  often  from  the  depths 
of  the  gulfs  or  from  the  narrow  bottom  of  the  valleys  to  giddy 
heights  crowned  with  thick  layers  of  clouds.  When  the 
mountain  sides  are  less  steep  and  bare,  a  belt  of  cultivated  land 
interrupted  by  rocks  can  be  seen  on  the  sides  of  the  inlet  or  on 
the  slopes  and  at  the  bottom  of  the  valleys.  Immediately  above 
the  belt  a  zone  of  forests  begins,  often  interrupted  in  the 
same  way  by  rocks  that  have  fallen  and  lie  upon  the  moun- 
tain sides.  Right  above  towers  the  bare  peak,  notched  into 


46  THE  SEACOAST 

deep  chasms,  where  the  cold  air  of  the  plateaux  is  caught  in  a 
whirlwind.  Sometimes  sheep  and  goats  get  shut  in  among  the 
crags  of  the  mountains  of  the  west  in  such  a  way  that  it  is 
impossible  for  them  to  escape ;  to  rescue  them  from  their 
imprisonment  it  is  necessary  to  be  let  down  the  face  of  the 
cliffs  with  the  help  of  ropes.  It  also  not  infrequently  happens 
that  fodder  has  to  be  collected  from  the  crevices  in  the 
rock,  packed  in  nets,  and  thrown  down  from  the  top  of  the 
precipice."  1 

This  is  indeed  a  contrast  to- the  beautiful,  laughing  plains 
of  Sweden  and  Denmark. 

Here  is  another  sketch  of  the  same  land  :  "  The  aspect  of  the 
country  is  always  the  same  from  whichever  open  pass  between 
the  two  Scandinavian  slopes  you  look  at  it :  all  along  the  eastern 
slope  you  ascend  gradually  through  a  series  of  long  valleys  ; 
then,  when  once  you  are  at  the  highest  point,  you  see  on  the  other 
side  an  abyss  hollowed  out  between  awful  cliffs  of  rocks.  On 
the  east  you  see  contours  of  pleasant  lands,  a  perspective  of 
hilltops  diminishing  in  the  distance,  a  uniform  line  of  plateau 
descending  gradually  between  long  valleys  to  the  horizon,  bright- 
ened by  strings  of  lakes.  On  the  west,  on  the  contrary,  the 
land  is  broken  up,  fissured  in  every  direction  ;  awful  chasms  and 
craggy  gulfs  filled  by  the  sea  ;  on  all  sides  formidable  cliffs  of 
rocks  rising  above  the  unfathomable  depths  of  the  fiords,  and  on 
all  sides  what  valleys  there  are,  are  very  short :  in  a  word,  a 
group  of  steep  mountains  flooded  by  the  sea  up  to  the  foot  of  the 
highest  peaks.  On  one  side  a  continental  region  where  the  lower- 
ing of  the  level  of  the  land  is  advantageous  for  the  develop- 
ment of  agriculture  and  for  the  growth  of  forests ;  on  the 
other  a  maritime  mountainous  belt  where  industries  con- 
nected with  the  sea  form  the  chief  means  of  livelihood  of  the 
inhabitants."  2 

It  is  a  complete  contrast. 

In  Western  Scandinavia,  where  the  natural  formation  is  such 
os  is  described  above,  the  fiord,  that  gulf  of  unfathomable 
depth,  is  the  centre  of  organised  life.  Here  is  a  glimpse  of 
that  very  peculiar  phenomenon  :  "  When  you  come  from  the 
east,"  says  a  traveller,  "  after  having  gradually  crossed  the 
lofty  plateau  with  a  '  kariol '  at  your  disposal,  and  suddenly 
1  Brocb,  pp.  4-6.  2  Rabot,  p.  53. 


FISHERMEN  OF  NORWAY  47 

see  beneath  you  the  fiord,  you  are  astounded  when  you  first 
catch  sight  of  a  steamer.  For  miles  not  a  roof  has  been  seen, 
not  a  sign  of  a  village  at  the  mountain's  foot,  nothing  to  announce 
a  human  settlement.  And  yet,  down  there,  right  at  the  bottom, 
a  vessel,  steaming  along,  looks  like  an  insect  that  has  fallen 
into  a  well.  You  go  nearer :  the  ship  grows  larger,  the  masts 
lengthen ;  it  is  a  real  steamer,  almost  as  important  as  those 
that  cross  from  Dover  to  Calais.  On  certain  days  of  the  week 
or  the  month  the  steamer  cornes  to  renew  for  an  instant  the 
interrupted  thread  of  life.  It  brings  letters,  provisions,  mer- 
chandise ;  it  comes  to  fetch  someone  for  a  journey.  The  only 
way  of  communicating  with  Gudvangen  is  by  a  kind  of  wherry 
or  small  boat.  Your  astonishment  redoubles  when  you  are 
on  board  the  steamer.  You  cannot  understand  how  a  steamer 
of  that  size  could  have  risked  itself  so  far.  Where  can  it  get 
out  ?  How  did  it  get  into  this  circle  of  rocks,  which  seem 
hermetically  sealed  ?  After  a  few  turns  of  the  paddles  the 
opening  is  discovered.  Between  two  spurs  of  the  gloomy 
mountains,  which  seem  to  advance  as  if  to  accost  each  other, 
a  bright  slit  opens.  The  light  enters  by  it  as  if  it  were  an  air- 
hole ;  it  spreads  in  a  fan  shape  on  the  water.  A  powerful 
longing  seizes  you  to  escape  through  that  slit  of  light.  What 
is  there  beyond  ?  Another  lake,  more  crags,  more  clouds 
reflected  in  the  clear  water,  more  mysterious  turns,  which 
suddenly  reveal  infinite  perspectives.  For  miles  you  could 
not  say  in  what  direction  the  water  is  flowing.  It  is  a  sleeping 
mirror,  in  which  the  colours  displayed  by  the  blue  and  white 
clouds  in  the  sky,  by  the  pine  trees  and  brighter  verdure,  appear 
so  clearly  reflected  that  one  ceases  to  distinguish  the  reality 
from  the  reflection.  .  .  .  Where  can  there  be  room  for  a  house, 
you  ask  yourself,  for  a  man's  home  ?  Rock  and  water  have 
possession  of  everything  !  The  Norwegians  make  answer  by 
this  legend.  WTien  God  distributed  good  soil  for  corn  over 
the  earth's  surface,  He  somehow  happened  to  forget  Norway. 
How  could  He  make  up  for  the  mistake  ?  He  carefully  collected 
in  His  divine  hand  the  fragments  of  earth  that  remained  at 
the  bottom  of  His  bag.  He  threw  them  at  random  over  the 
forest  of  peaks.  Then,  to  console  those  whom  He  had  unin- 
tentionally disinherited,  he  put  in  their  hearts  the  love  of  the 
land.  What  can  be  the  state  of  mind  of  the  people  who  attempt 


48  THE  SEACOAST 

to  live  between  these  threatening  rocks  and  those  bottomless 
precipices  ?  Sometimes  they  live  in  a  mere  cleft,  as  at  Gud- 
vangen.  Two  awful  walls  overwhelm  them.  It  is  necessary 
to  lie  on  one's  back  to  see  the  sky.  The  character  of  these 
solitary  people  who  have  no  book  in  which  to  read,  except  their 
own  minds,  is  truly  represented  by  that  group  of  wooden 
houses  (the  gaard — a  dwelling  divided  into  little  chalets) 
reflected  in  the  tarnished  looking-glass  of  the  fiord.  At 
incalculable  depths  the  water  creates  a  second  sky ;  the 
human  nests  are  hung  between  these  two  luminous  points  in 
a  gulf  of  darkness.  Where  is  the  reality  ?  Where  is T the 
seeming  ?  Is  the  sky  up  there  or  at  the  bottom  of  these 
sleeping  waters  ?  It  makes  you  feel  giddy.  Nevertheless, 
there  is  no  need  to  speak  ill  of  this  flat,  smooth  water. 

"  When  I  caught  sight  of  Orkedalsfjord,  after  a  long  and 
rather  alarming  journey  across  the  Kiolen  Mountains,  which 
separate  the  Scandinavian  slopes  in  the  north,  it  was  with  all 
the  delight  of  a  Norwegian  that  I  saw  that  monotonous  water 
again.  I  felt  that  it  meant  freedom  and  was  the  bond  of 
social  life,  the  vehicle  of  thought.  The  fiords,  the  lakes,  are 
not  content,  like  mirrors  in  a  gloomy  palace,  to  double  the  light 
of  the  landscape  by  reflecting  the  sky.  They  bring  fertility 
to  the  heart  of  the  rocks.  They  make  for  themselves  belts 
of  fresh  grass ;  they  support  flotillas  of  islets  laden  with  trees. 
They  draw  down  pines  and  willows  from  the  top  of  the  mountain 
to  their  pure  water,  into  which  they  can  plunge  their  roots  in 
default  of  earth.  These  curtains  of  trees  catch  the  dust  flying 
in  the  air ;  every  year  the  fallen  leaves  make  a  good  loam  at 
their  feet.  The  layer  of  vegetable  soil  is  deepened,  and  in  the 
place  where  there  was  only  a  rough  slope  of  rock,  a  little  meadow 
appears.  The  Norwegian  cows,  free  as  goats,  find  out  the  way 
to  it.  The  peasants,  who  seek  their  cattle  in  the  mountains, 
trace  them  to  the  spot.  They  labour  patiently  with  pickaxe 
or  gunpowder  to  clear  an  easier  passage  to  it ;  they  throw 
down  a  few  fir  trees  from  the  top  of  the  chasm.  They  bring 
the  framework  of  a  house  to  the  place.  Come  again  the  next 
year,  it  will  smile  at  you  with  its  roof  of  turf.  Below,  there 
will  be  a  boat  moored  to  a  pine  tree.  Man  will  have  wrested 
one  more  home  from  hostile  nature."  l 

1  Hughes  Le  Roux,  Notes  sur  la  Ncrv&gc,  chap.  i. 


FISHERMEN  OF  NORWAY  49 

At  the  extremity  of  the  fiord,  where  the  sea  comes  to  an 
end,  a  narrow  valley  generally  begins,  a  prolongation  of  the 
fiord  upon  dry  land.  It  is  a  fiord  with  a  solid  bottom,  beyond 
the  fiord  with  a  liquid  one.  Therefore  the  Norwegians  call  it 
fiiordddl,  the  valley  of  the  fiord.  A  stream,  now  falling  in 
cascades,  now  quite  shut  in,  now  hurrying  down  a  slope,  now 
broken  by  falls,  flows  there  as  in  a  cleft.  The  cliffs  which 
form  the  steep  sides  of  the  valley  gradually  advance  towards 
one  another  till  they  close  it  in  completely  with  an  impassable 
perpendicular  barrier.  If  the  cliff  were  scaled,  no  peak  would 
meet  the  eye  but  a  continuation  of  the  valley,  which  looks  as 
if  it  had  remained  suspended  there.  It  is  fringed  sometimes 
by  slender  peaks,  sometimes  by  gloomy,  bell-shaped  masses ; 
this  is  what  is  called  a  fielddal,  a  mountain  valley.  This 
elevated  region  marks  the  end  of  a  world  ;  below,  there  are 
long  strips  of  inhabited  land  ;  above,  mighty  billows  of  solitary, 
useless  mountains ;  this  is  the  field,  the  desert-like  rampart 
between  the  two  Scandinavian  worlds. 

Now  that  we  have  before  our  eyes  a  picture  of  the  pre- 
cipitous fiord,  it  is  easy  to  form  an  idea  of  the  three  character- 
istics of  the  locality  which  exercised  the  greatest  influence  upon 
its  inhabitants,  as  we  shall  presently  see.  They  are  :  the 
narrow  and  scattered  pieces  of  land  suitable  for  cultivation ;  the 
perpendicular  banks,  favourable  to  the  near  approach  of  fish  ; 
the  sheltered  waters,  favourable  to  navigation  in  small  boats. 

The  pieces  of  land  suitable  for  cultivation,  narrow  and 
scattered  as  they  are,  are  not  actually  found  in  the  steep  slopes 
of  rock,  except  where  some  cleft  has  been  formed  in  its  lofty 
walls,  which  has  served  as  a  receptacle  for  and  barrier  to  a  mass 
of  dust,  inorganic  and  organic,  that  has  fallen  down  the 
declivity  and  spread  out  in  a  little  platform  on  the  shore.  Man 
can  there  set  foot  on  soil,  erect  a  modest  dwelling,  cultivate 
a  narrow  estate,  isolated  and  incapable  of  being  extended, 
and  make  what  use  he  may  of  the  pine  wood  which  has  sprung 
up  on  the  broken  slope  of  the  hill,  and  of  the  mountain  pastures 
higher  up.  In  the  region  of  the  precipitous  fiords — namely, 
on  the  western  slope — only  one  fiftieth  part  of  the  superficies  is 
under  cultivation.1 

The  perpendicular  banks,  which  make  it  easy  for  fish  to  come 

1  Rabot,  p.  54. 
4 


50  THE  SEACOAST 

near,  make  the  mechanism,  as  it  were,  of  the  submarine  plateau 
wonderfully  complete.  If  the  plateau  which  nears  the  shore 
had  been  connected  with  it  by  an  inclined  plane,  and  welded 
to  it  by  a  sloping  bank,  just  as  the  shallow  bottom  of  the  English 
Channel  is  attached  to  both  its  shores  by  gentle  slopes,  the  fish 
would  have  stayed  on  the  submarine  terrace  and  would  not 
have  approached  the  land:  they  would  not  have  found  a  sufficient 
depth  of  water  along  the  coast-line.  Man  would  have  been 
obliged  to  go  out  to  meet  the  fish  in  order  to  catch  them ;  he 
would  have  had  to  venture  abr"oad  over  the  bank,  and  expose 
himself  to  the  "  perils  of  the  sea."  But  it  is  just  the  contrary: 
the  Norwegian  coast  is  separated  from  the  submarine  plateau 
by  a  great  depression  in  the  sea  bottom.  This  plateau  does 
not  serve  as  the  base  of  the  coast.  The  coast  rests  on  a  kind 
of  pier  or  ledge  which  is  much  lower  down  beneath  the  water, 
so  that  there  is  a  hollow  between  the  coast  and  the  plateau 
which  is  called  the  Norwegian  Channel.  Each  of  the  fiords 
which  riddle  the  Norwegian  coast  is  really  a  marine  abyss  :  for 
instance,  the  Trondhjem  Fiord  is  295  fathoms  deep,  the  Roms- 
dal  Fiord  is  240,  the  fiord  at  Sondmore  is  394,  while  the  Sogne 
Fiord  is  680  fathoms,  an  astounding  depth  for  so  narrow  an 
arm  of  the  sea.1 

With  such  a  depth  of  water,  fish  can  come  right  up  to  the 
perpendicular  wall  of  the  fiord.  They  can  swim  on  dry  land, 
so  to  speak.  Like  the  high-built  Norwegian  vessels,  they  can 
come  close  into  the  shore  far  into  the  interior  of  the  country. 
They  can  cross  it  almost  from  end  to  end.  The  Sogne  Fiord 
forms  a  passage  for  them  105' 634  miles  long,  which  comes  to 
an  end  only  4-349  miles  as  the  crow  flies  from  the  group  of  the 
Horunger  Mountains,  one  of  the  highest  points  of  the  western 
slope  ;  the  Hardanger  Fiord  takes  them  a  distance  of  62 '138 
miles;  the  Nord  Fiord,  43-496  miles;  the  Sundals  Fiord,  34-17 
miles,  etc.2 

The  fish  come  in  large  numbers  by  the  deep  and  countless 
openings  which,  as  it  were,  transpierce  the  coast  of  Norway 
everywhere,  and  go  to  seek  the  fisherman  at  the  very  door  of 
his  dwelling  in  all  the  windings  of  the  habitable  parts  of  the 
country.  The  following  fact  shows  the  great  abundance  of  the 
fish.  Clever  fishermen  sometimes  succeed  in  blockading  a  whole 

1  Rabot,  p.  79.  2  Broch,  p.  84  ;  Rabot,  p.  174. 


FISHERMEN  OF  NORWAY  51 

slioal  of  fisli  by  letting  down  a  huge  net  beneath  the  water  at  the 
entrance  of  a  narrow  fiord  which  closes  it  like  a  curtain  ;  in  this 
way  they  can  catch  110,050  bushels  of  herrings  in  a  few  days.1 
But,  what  is  still  more  strange,  the  sea  furnishes  the  Nor- 
wegians with  fish  even  in  the  fresh  water  in  the  fiorddals — fchat 
is,  the  valleys  that  prolong  the  fiords — even  above  the  rapids 
which  the  rivers  form  as  they  descend  to  the  sea.  "  For  a 
sedentary  race,"  says  Le  Play,  "  the  salmon  is  a  more  valuable 
article  of  food  than  the  salt-water  fish,  because  it  climbs  up  all 
the  streams,  and,  as  it  were,  offers  itself  to  the  fisherman  even 
among  the  steepest  mountains.  It  forms  a  far  more  important 
article  of  food  than  the  fish  which  live  in  the  streams,  because 
while  it  is  growing  it  draws  its  chief  supply  of  nourishment 
from  the  sea,  and  not  from  the  fresh  water.  On  reaching 
the  adult  age,  salmon  leave  the  sea,  where  the  greater  part  of 
their  development  has  taken  place.  They  go  up  the  streams 
in  the  spring  at  the  time  when  the  volume  of  water  is  swollen 
by  the  melting  of  the  snow.  They  arrange  themselves  at  such 
times  in  two  lines,  starting  from  the  leading  salmon,  which  is 
placed  in  the  centre  of  the  stream,  and  forming  an  acute  angle, 
so  that  they  meet  the  force  of  the  current  obliquely.  They 
travel  along  with  a  peculiar  noise,  and  with  a  speed  that  may 
be  compared  to  that  of  a  railway  train.  They  rest  during  the 
night,  and  then  begin  the  journey  again  by  promptly  forming 
into  their  angular  line,  with  the  strong  members  at  the  head 
and  the  weak  at  the  rear  ;  and  so  they  go  on  until  each  one 
has  reached  the  spot  where  it  is  destined  to  reproduce  its  species. 
Reproduction  cannot  take  place  except  in  fresh  water  and 
when  certain  definite  conditions  are  present.  The  young 
salmon  has  partly  the  same  food  as  other  river  fish ;  but  he 
thrives  best  in  the  hot  season,  when  he  hunts  insects  which  fly 
near  the  surface  of  the  water,  and  which  he  snaps  up  by  making 
constant  rapid  leaps  from  the  water.  After  two  years  the 
salmon  no  longer  finds  sufficient  nourishment  in  the  river 
which  gave  him  birth.  He  then  goes  down  to  its  mouth, 
gradually  gets  accustomed  to  live  in  salter  and  salter  water, 
till  he  finally  disappears  into  the  depths  of  the  sea.  There 
he  grows  rapidly  and  undergoes  a  great  transformation.  When 
four  years  old  he  is  mature  for  reproduction  and  begins  to 

1  Rabot,  p.  155. 


52  THE  SEACOAST 

ascend  the  rivers  (and,  owing  to  a  peculiar  power  he  has  of  leap- 
ing out  of  the  water,  he  is  able  to  clear  the  rapids).  When  the 
eggs  have  been  deposited,  the  large  salmon,  which  cannot  obtain 
sufficient  food  in  the  river,  return  to  the  sea.  To  sum  up  : 
the  salmon  owes  the  exceptional  importance  he  has  acquired 
amongst  the  natural  products  which  the  northern  races  turn 
to  account  principally  to  two  circumstances.  Like  sea  fish, 
the  salmon  finds  all  that  is  necessary  for  rapid  development 
in  the  ocean,  that  great  reservoir  of  food ;  but  to  satisfy  the 
laws  of  reproduction  of  his  species,  he  is  obliged  to  deposit  his 
spawn  in  fresh  water.  At  such  times  he  comes  to  every  part 
of  the  mainland,  and,  as  it  were,  offers  himself  to  the  fisherman 
to  be  caught.  In  Europe  it  is  only  the  people  of  the  north 
that  benefit  by  this  natural  product,  because  that  region 
possesses  the  only  rivers  where  the  salmon  can  find  the  very 
cool  water  in  summer  that  is  necessary  for  the  incubation  and 
hatching  of  his  spawn.  Moreover,  it  is  probable  that  in  this 
matter  the  Gulf  Stream  contributes  directly  in  another  way 
to  the  well-being  of  the  people  :  it  is  in  the  waters  of  the  Gulf 
Stream,  in  all  probability,  that  the  young  salmon  go  and  feed 
during  the  period  of  rapid  growth  which  was  mentioned  above."  1 
All  that  I  have  quoted  accentuates  the  advantages  of  the 
Norwegian  environment.  But  there  is  still  more  to  be  said 
for  it.  The  sheltered  waters  in  the  fiords  and  all  along  the  coast 
make  the  system  still  more  complete.  A  writer  has  described 
the  appearance  of  the  sea  in  these  parts  very  well  with  a  few 
strokes  of  the  pen  :  "  The  mere  look  of  the  water,"  he  says, 
"  warns  you  that  you  are  moving  in  the  unknown  ;  you  have 
no  longer  before  you  the  fluctuating  sea,  nor  yet  the  river, 
with  a  country  side  of  its  own,  creeping  down  to  its  mouth,  but 
a  living  stagnant  pool,  like  the  water  in  a  basin.  The  wavelet 
that  travels  away  from  each  side  of  our  steamer  is  heavy  ;  it 
has  the  somewhat  shiny  look  of  oilcloth."  2  So,  not  only  do 
the  fish  come  and  offer  themselves  up  of  their  own  accord, 
but  the  sea  too,  which  brings  them,  conspires  to  invite  the 
fisherman  to  catch  them,  by  making  its  water  dormant,  so  as 
to  reassure  him,  make  his  work  easy,  and  enable  him  to  travel 
in  a  little  boat  without  fear  over  the  vast  domain  of  the  sea. 

1  Le  Play,  Ouvriers  enropeens,  vol.  iii.  p.  97. 

2  IT.  Le  Roux,  p.  3. 


FISHERMEN  OF  NORWAY  53 

The  submarine  bank,  which  rises  outside  the  entrance  to 
the  fiords,  and  protects  them  from  the  waves  of  the  deep  sea  ; 
their  depth,  which  tends  to  check  surface  agitation  by  the 
heavy  mass  of  water  below ;  the  height  of  their  rocky  sides, 
the  winding  route  they  follow,  the  distance  which  they  penetrate 
into  the  land,  all  help  to  screen  them  from  the  winds  of  the 
high  seas,  but  are  not  the  only  causes  of  the  calmness  of  their 
waters.  A  further  peculiarity  has  now  to  be  studied  ;  the 
special  organisation  of  the  place  reveals  another  wonder,  a 
fresh  harmony  of  nature.  Along  the  Norwegian  coast  stretches 
a  belt  of  innumerable  islands,  islets,  and  rocks,  almost  without 
interruption,  which  protects  the  mainland  from  the  sea. 

This  is  what  is  known  as  the  Skjasrgaard,  and  it  is 
inside  the  sprinkling  of  islands,  between  it  and  the  coast, 
that  the  coasting  trade  goes  on.  It  is  a  regular  patrol  route, 
a  channel  for  circumnavigation,  which  goes  all  along  the 
coast  of  Norway  from  Gothenburg  in  the  south  of  Sweden, 
near  the  Norwegian  frontier,  as  far  as  Cape  North.  In  this 
natural  canal  the  waters  are  calm  and  sheltered.  Their  depth 
is  favourable  to  navigation  ;  the  great  lateral  depression  of  the 
sea  bottom,  the  great  "  fiordian  cavity,"  or  Norwegian  Channel, 
is  below.  The  following  is  a  rapid  sketch  a  traveller  has 
made  of  this  formation,  which  is  peculiar  to  Norway  :  "On 
coming  out  of  the  fiord  we  see  an  absolutely  extraordinary 
sight :  we  again  come  upon  the  enigmatical  coastal  archipelago, 
the  Slcjaergaard,  of  which  we  caught  a  glimpse  in  crossing  from 
Christiansand  to  Christiania  ;  but  it  is  far  more  barren  and 
wilder  here  (on  the  west  coast).  Not  a  clump  of  trees  anywhere, 
scarcely  a  blade  of  sickly  grass  among  the  stony  hillocks.  On 
ail  sides  banks  of  strange  pebbles,  and  in  all  directions  masses 
of  islands  and  rounded  rocks,  like  the  heads  of  colossal  screws 
buried  in  the  middle  of  the  sea.  A  shower  of  aerolites  seems 
to  have  fallen  upon  the  surface  of  the  ocean,  and  their  points 
alone  emerge  above  the  waves.  The  spectacle  remains  the 
same  everywhere  and  always,  and  yet,  for  hours  and  hours 
one  is  absorbed  in  the  contemplation  of  it ;  it  is  so  strange 
and  fantastic.  The  steamer  follows  the  channel  along  the 
coast,  it  passes  to  the  south  of  a  large  mass  of  land,  the  island 
of  Hitteren  ;  and  beyond,  the  islands  begin  again,  thick  as  dust. 
Round  the  island  of  Smolen,  which  appears  next,  their  number 


54  THE  SEACOAST 

rises  to  2600.  According  to  Professor  Helland,  the  department 
of  Romsdal,  which  includes  this  piece  of  coast,  embraces  more 
than  8000  islands  ;  and  yet  the  coast-line  of  Romsdal,  from 
north  to  south,  with  all  its  indentations,  does  not  exceed  99*42 
miles. 

"  To  the  south  of  Smolen,  the  channel  formed  by  the  islands 
fades  away  and  disappears,  drowned  in  the  ocean's  vast  horizon  : 
the  archipelago  of  islands  by  the  coast,  that  protective  rampart, 
dissolves  itself  into  an  unbroken  line  of  ocean.  Straightway 
the  motionless  surface  of  the  water  breaks  into  slow  undulations. 
Lifted  by  the  swell,  the  steamer  rolls  and  staggers  like  a  drunken 
man.  After  an  hour  of  rolling,  we  again  enter  the  calm  channel." 1 

"  The  canals  through  this  coastal  archipelago,"  as  the 
same  writer  well  says,  "  form  the  national  roads,  and  the 
fiords  the  parish  roads." 

This  is  the  road  that  lay  open  before  our  emigrants.  This 
is  the  way  by  which  they  came. 

We  are  now  able  to  introduce  them  into  their  new  country. 
As  we  are  acquainted  with  it,  it  will  be  easy  to  follow  them. 
If  we  had  wished  to  accompany  them  and  observe  their  actions, 
without  knowing  the  country  beforehand,  we  should  have  been 
constantly  stopped  by  obscurities,  we  should  have  travelled 
in  uncertainty  through  an  unknown  land.  At  each  step  we 
should  have  needed  explanations,  sometimes  long  commentaries. 
The  connection  between  the  numerous  causes,  which  we  have 
seen  depending  on  each  other  in  a  wonderful  sequence,  would 
have  escaped  us.  We  should  not  have  understood  the  whole 
force  of  those  local  conditions  which  are  so  closely  knitted 
together  in  one  vast  whole,  and  which  bring  together  phenomena 
which  produce  such  momentous  results.  We  should  have  had 
only  confused  and  fragmentary  views  of  many  things.  We 
should  have  been  like  tourists  who  have  not  prepared  their 
route  beforehand. 

By  making  a  study  of  the  Germanic,  Gothic,  and  Odinid 
ancestors  of  our  emigrants,  we  acquired  a  fairly  profound  know- 
ledge of  the  sources  of  development  of  their  first  form  of  society. 
We  were  also  obliged  to  make  ourselves  fairly  well  acquainted 
with  the  special  conditions  of  place,  which  brought  about  such 
a  great  transformation.  We  now  know  both  elements,  and 
1  Rabot,  pp.  85,  87. 


FISHERMEN  OF  NORWAY  55 

have  them  at  hand,  ready  to  be  used.  We  shall  now  proceed 
to  put  them  together,  and  a  combination  will  be  the  result, 
as  one  conclusion  follows  from  two  well-grounded  premises. 

There  is  no  other  element  to  be  introduced  into  the  problem. 
When  the  Gothic  emigrants  began  to  settle  in  Norway  they 
found  the  country  unoccupied.  Therefore  there  is  no  question 
of  any  influence  having  been  exercised  upon  them  by  people 
belonging  to  another  form  of  society. 

Archseologists  conversant  with  prehistoric  times  declare 
that  the  steep  coasts  of  Norway  were  not  peopled  until  the 
arrival  of  the  race  that  still  inhabits  them,  and  that  race 
is  recognised  to  be  the  same  as  that  which  now  occupies 
Sweden.  Social  Science  explains  this  fact  very  well.  A  country 
of  the  type  that  we  have  just  described  could  not  be  inhabited 
by  either  of  the  two  kinds  of  societies  which  inhabited  Europe 
in  primitive  times  :  the  compact  form  of  society  of  the  real 
patriarchal  tribes  and  the  unorganised  society  of  the  hunters. 
The  patriarchal  tribes  could  not  move  except  in  a  numerous 
body.  How  could  narrow  platforms  of  land,  scattered  far 
apart  about  the  fiords,  offer  a  place  of  settlement  to  establish- 
ments consisting  of  a  large  number  of  persons  incapable  of 
living  in  isolation,  and  closely  bound  together  by  habit  and 
by  what  I  should  term  artificial  requirements  ?  Imagine  the 
arrival  in  such  a  place  of  the  large  and  tumultuous  bands  of 
ancient  Germans  from  Lower  Germany  that  Tacitus  describes, 
and  see  if  the  country  of  Norway  would  not  be  absolutely 
inadequate  for  their  ordinary  everyday  life  as  the  historian 
has  pictured  it  to  us.  Nor  were  the  hunters  any  better  suited 
to  turn  the  country  to  good  account.  For  what  sort  of  game 
do  you  suppose  they  could  hunt  with  any  profit  in  a  place  like 
that,  cut  up  into  chasms  and  gulfs  ?  Everything  presents 
obstacles  to  hunting.  And  what  obstacles  they  are  !  More- 
over, large  game  is  rare  there  ;  what  is  there  for  it  to  feed  on  ? 
There  is  hardly  anything  to  hunt  except  birds.  Fishing  would 
be  the  only  attraction  for  a  race  of  hunters.  But,  however 
superabundant  fish  may  be,  it  cannot  satisfy  all  the  diverse 
needs  of  life  ;  it  does  not  supply  material  for  clothing,  which  is 
as  absolutely  necessary  in  that  region  as  food.  Hunters  would 
find  it  more  worth  while  to  occupy  the  wider  and  colder  districts 
of  the  north,  where  furry  animals  could  supply  them  with  the 


56  THE  SEACOAST 

chief  necessaries  of  life.  That  is  what  they  actually  did  ;  so 
neither  the  patriarchal  tribes  of  the  south  nor  the  hunters  of 
the  north  were  able  to  supply  inhabitants  for  the  west  coast 
of  Norway.  There  is,  however,  one  piece  of  evidence  showing 
the  presence  of  fishermen  and  troops  of  hunters  in  Norway 
before  the  arrival  of  our  emigrants — that  is,  a  kjokkenmodding, 
a  heap  of  culinary  debris,  composed  of  remains  of  shells  and 
bones  of  wild  animals  ;  but  it  must  be  observed  that  these 
remains  were  found  in  Trondhjem,  a  region  which,  as  far  as 
its  natural  structure  is  concerned,  should  be  part  of  Sweden. 
It  is  also  connected  with  that  country  by  a  much-frequented 
road  across  the  mountains,  so  that  it  seems  like  an  offshoot 
to  the  west,  an  opening,  an  excrescence  on  the  western  slope. 
Vestiges  of  this  kind  in  Scandinavia  are  found  only  in  the  plains, 
chiefly  in  those  of  Denmark  ;  the  natural  formation  of  the 
places  where  they  are  always  found  is  well  defined.  Nothing 
corresponding  to  the  Jcjokkenmodding  is  found  in  regions 
where  the  coast  is  rocky. 

Dr.  Broch  makes  the  following  remark,  which  is  a  further 
proof  that  the  country  was  uninhabited  at  the  time  of  the 
arrival  of  the  emigrants  :  "  The  Norwegian  '  gaards  ' — that 
is  to  say,  the  isolated  dwellings — all  bear  names  which  generally 
date  from  the  time  of  their  first  establishment  in  the  country, 
and  often  show  some  traces  of  it.  All  over  Norway  there  are 
gaards  bearmg  names  that  refer  to  the  beaver,  an  animal  which 
is  very  widely  spread  over  the  country  and  lives  gregariously. 
Now  it  is  an  undisputed  fact  that  colonies  of  beavers  soon 
disappear  when  man's  presence  comes  to  disturb  their  solitude. 
Therefore  these  names  show  that  the  gaards  date  from  the  first 
settlement  of  men  in  the  land.  A  large  number  of  rivers  and 
islands  bear  names  that  have  the  same  origin."  x 

The  type  of  men  needed  to  people  our  Norwegian  coast  was 
such  as  had  sprung  from  families  in  which  the  patriarchal 
system  had  been  considerably  weakened,  not  through  decadence 
but  through  progress.  They  must  have  been  men  who  had  been 
impelled  by  excess  of  energy,  not  by  a  love  of  idleness,  to  quit  the 
community,  who  had  been  broken  in  to  the  work  of  agriculture, 
and  were  capable  of  that  steady  labour  without  which  it  would 
have  been  impossible  to  turn  the  shreds  of  land  scattered  in 

1  Broch,  p.  205. 


FISHERMEN  OF  NORWAY  57 

the  hollows  of  the  fiords  into  fertile  fields  capable  of  providing 
those  necessaries  of  life  which  fishing  alone  does  not  furnish, 
and  which  the  wandering  tribes  of  hunters  were  incapable  of 
procuring  for  themselves.  Moreover,  they  must  have  brought 
with  them  the  cereals  of  the  north — rye,  barley,  and  oats — as 
well  as  cows,  goats,  and  sheep,  in  order  to  have  a  complete  food 
supply  and  material  for  clothing.  The  emigrants  trained  on 
the  eastern  slope  of  Scandinavia  were  just  the  men  capable 
of  fulfilling  these  requirements  ;  and  they  fulfilled  them. 

There  are  two  ways  of  forming  an  exact  idea  of  the  conditions 
.which  these  emigrants  found  on  their  first  arrival  in  the  new 
country. 

The  first  way  is  to  examine  the  local  conditions  under  which 
the  inhabitants  of  the  Norwegian  coast  live  nowadays.  The 
place  has  not  changed.  We  are  well  enough  acquainted  with 
it  to  know  how  far  it  deserves  to  be  placed  in  the  category  of 
places  that  cannot  be  transformed.  What  new  shape  could 
those  rocks  and  that  sea  assume  or  those  peaks  and  steep  slopes, 
these  immovable  mountain-tops  ?  How  could  that  free  oceanic 
people,  the  fish,  ever  change  ?  In  this  respect  Norway  has  no 
history,  and  indeed  she  has  scarcely  any  at  all,  surrounded  as  she 
is  by  unchanging  conditions  of  life.  It  is  easy  to  distinguish 
every  new  event  that  has  supervened  since  the  beginning, 
because  it  conies  from  some  cause  outside  the  country  or  because 
it  carves  a  date  for  itself  as  every  remarkable  change  does  in  a 
country  which  is  not  made  for  change.  The  following  are  the 
chief  examples : — 

Thus,  the  period  is  known  at  which  the  cultivation  of  land — 
a  practice  as  old  as  the  inhabitants — began  to  spread  into  the 
interior  of  the  land  as  men  began  to  count  less  on  the  results  of 
fishing.  "  In  the  first  Iron  Age  "  (from  Odin's  epoch  till  the 
seventh  century),  says  Broch,  "  the  valleys  with  less  fertile  soil, 
suitable  for  woods  only — in  CJsterdal,  for  example,  and  Nume- 
dal — were  still  almost  uninhabited.  But  during  the  second 
period  of  the  Iron  Age  (which  begins  about  the  year  700)  they 
were  inhabited,  as  were  (generally  speaking)  all  the  mountain 
valleys  of  Southern  Norway  which  were  suitable  for  permanent 
dwellings,  and  which  are  well  populated  in  the  present  day."  x 
"  It  was  not  till  after  the  introduction  of  Christianity,  about  the 

1  Broch,  p.  205, 


58  THE  SEACOAST 

year  1000,  and  after  the  expeditions  of  the  Vikings,  that  agri- 
culture and  cattle-rearing  could  be  considered  equal  in  import- 
ance to  fishing."  l 

It  is  known  at  what  period  trade  in  wood  began  to  rank  among 
the  country's  sources  of  wealth  :  "  It  was  in  the  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth  centuries,"  says  Broch,  "  that  the  cultivation  of 
forests  began  to  enter  into  account  as  a  branch  of  commerce  ; 
but  it  is  only  in  latter  years  that  the  sale  of  wood  has  reached 
a  figure  comparable  to  that  of  the  sale  of  fish,  and  has  eventually 
surpassed  it.  From  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century 
the  towns  on  the  south  coast  of  Norway  acquired  a  good  deal 
of  importance  owing  to  this  new  article  of  commerce.  The 
Dutch  at  that  time  had  the  commerce  of  the  North  Sea  in  their 
hands,  and  came  to  Norway  to  get  wood  in  the  rough  state. 
Towards  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  sawmills  worked 
by  water  began  to  spring  up  in  Norway,  but  very  many  years 
passed  before  they  could  rival  the  work  done  by  Dutch  mills. 
A  large  number  of  small  towns  were  built  about  that  time  on 
the  south  coast  near  the  mouths  of  the  rivers  that  were  used 
for  the  floating  of  the  wood."  2 

It  is  known  at  what  period  the  mines  first  began  to  be  worked. 
"  The  skilled  working  of  mines  and  foundries  in  Norway  began 
three  hundred  and  sixty  years  ago.  Christian  in.  was  the  first 
to  call  in  German  miners  and  to  give  orders  in  1539  for  the  first 
organised  working  of  the  mines  according  to  the  German  system. 
And  during  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  the  mines 
acquired  great  importance."  3 

It  is  known  at  what  period  a  new  method  of  preserving  cod 
was  introduced.  There  are  two  manners  of  preparing  the  fish. 
The  first  produces  the  torfisJc  (dried  fish)  or  the  rundfisk 
(round  fish  in  the  shape  of  a  stick).  Now,  it  is  known  that  this 
was  formerly  the  only  method  used ;  it  is  still  used  by  the 
fishermen  for  preserving  fish  for  their  own  use.  As  for  the 
other  method,  which  produces  the  klipfish  (split  fish),  it  is 
known  to  have  been  introduced  into  Norway  by  the  English 
at  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century."  4 

It  is  known  at  what  period  the  herring  became  an  article  of 
exportation  :  "So  long  as  it  was  only  preserved  as  smoked 

1  Broch,  p.  371.  2  Ibid.  pp.  371,  434. 

3  Ibid.  p.  365.  *  Ibid.  pp.  370,  377. 


FISHERMEN  OF  NORWAY  59 

herring  or  dried  herring  (i.e.  dried  in  the  air),  the  only  method  of 
preparation  that  was  used  in  ancient  times,  it  was  impossible 
for  it  ever  to  become  an  article  of  commerce  of  any  importance, 
although  it  formed  the  chief  means  of  sustenance  of  the  people 
living  on  the  banks  of  rivers  well  stocked  with  fish.  But  when 
the  Dutchman  Beuckel  invented  the  method  of  salting  the 
herring  in  1416,  and  when  this  mode  of  preparation  had  been 
adopted  in  Norway,  the  herring  fisheries  on  the  west  coast 
became  of  national  importance,  and  could  take  rank  beside  the 
cod  fisheries."  l 

It  is  known  at  what  period  the  smallest  details  of  fishing 
appliances  were  improved.  "  The  bottom  line  was  introduced 
at  the  beginning  of  the  fifteenth  century  at  Sondmore  (west 
coast).  This  line  is  about  218  yards  long  and  has  120  hooks 
attached  to  it  at  intervals  of  4  to  6J  feet.  It  is  kept  horizontal 
by  means  of  cable-buoys  at  a  depth  that  varies  according  to  the 
depth  at  which  the  fish  swim.  The  buoys  were  formerly 
made  of  wood  or  cork,  but  now  they  generally  consist  of  globes 
of  hollow  glass  attached  by  strings.  They  are  called  Glaskavl. 
Nets  are  a  much  more  recent  invention.  They  were  invented 
at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and  were  only  gradually 
introduced  in  the  course  of  the  eighteenth  century.  The 
fishing  net  used  for  cod  is  about  43J  yards  by  4J,  with  meshes 
about  2f  inches  across.  It  is  placed  in  the  water  with  its 
longer  side  horizontal,  and  hangs  down  at  the  desired  depth, 
where  it  is  sustained  by  buoys.  The  codfish,  in  striking  violently 
against  this  barrier,  gets  its  head  caught  in  the  meshes,  and  is  a 
prisoner  ;  in  trying  to  extricate  itself,  it  expires."  2 

These  examples  show  how  it  is  possible,  nay  easy,  to  elimi- 
nate everything  which  does  not  date  from  the  beginning,  and 
to  separate  it  from  what  actually  exists  in  Norway  now. 
Moreover,  that  which  dates  from  the  beginning  must  necessarily 
be  that  which  is  imperiously  demanded  by  the  unchanging 
nature  of  the  place  for  the  support  and  reproduction  of  a  race. 

But  there  is  a  second  way  of  forming  an  idea  of  what 
happened  in  the  beginning.  It  is  this  :  to  observe  what  still 
goes  on  in  those  parts  of  the  Norwegian  coast  which  have  been 
uninhabited  till  now  or  but  little  inhabited,  where  people 
still  continue  to  settle.  The  absolutely  simple  and  primitive 

1  Broch,  p.  381.  *  Ibid.  pp.  373,  374. 


60  THE  SEACOAST 

methods  that  are  adopted  by  emigrants  of  the  present  day, 
and  that  are  directly  suggested  by  the  permanent  natural 
resources  of  the  place,  show  in  a  realistic  and  irrefutable 
manner  how  the  first  emigrants  must  infallibly  have  acted. 

In  the  first  place,  we  must  consider  the  means  of  transport 
used  by  the  emigrants. 

In  Norway  there  is  only  one  simple  means  of  transport 
within  the  reach  of  everyone  :  it  is  the  small  boat  or  wherry, 
which  a  single  man  can  propel  with  oars  or  with  the  help  of  a 
square  sail  suspended  from  a  yard.  It  is  at  once  a  simple 
means  of  locomotion  and  a  necessary  one.  For  it  is  impossible 
to  have  any  other  roads  for  penetrating  into  the  country  than 
the  canal  of  the  skjaergaard  and  the  fiords,  except  at  the  cost 
of  immense  labour.  Norway  is  a  rustic  Venice  on  a  vast  scale. 
But  the  wherry,  besides  being  simple  and  necessary,  has  also 
the  merit  of  being  serviceable  everywhere,  as  the  water  of  the 
fiords  is  calm  and  of  such  a  depth  as  to  prevent  it  from  striking 
against  the  bottom  on  nearing  the  shore. 

The  Gothic  emigrant  appreciated  this  means  of  transport. 
He  was  familiar  with  it.  He  used  to  employ  it  on  the  eastern 
slope,  which,  though  it  possessed  no  skjaergaard  nor  rugged 
fiords,  no  sea  free  from  ice  nor  fisheries  on  the  Norwegian  bank, 
nor  had  any  lack  of  cultivable  lands,  was  none  the  less  a  land 
in  great  part  submerged,  where  the  skiff  was  in  everyday  use. 
We  have  mentioned  before  that  the  Goths  were  obliged  in 
former  days  to  make  use  of  the  wherry  for  transporting  their 
land  produce  (as  are  the  peasants  of  Brandenburg  at  the 
present  day),  when  they  were  in  the  well- watered  region 
round  the  Spree  and  the  Havel  where  Berlin  is  now  situated, 
and  where  they  stopped  on  their  journey  towards  Scan- 
dinavia. With  an  instrument  so  familiar  to  him  as  the 
wherry,  with  a  water-way  as  straightforward  as  the  canal  of 
the  skjaergaard,  which  conducted  him  as  far  as  Gothenburg 
in  Gothland,  the  emigrant  had  no  need  of  anyone  to  show  him 
the  way  into  the  new  country.  He  was  all-sufficient  in  himself  : 
that  is  the  great  fact  which  is  evinced  and  which  will  remain  in 
evidence  till  the  end.  Ho  did  not  feel  it  a  necessity  to  set  out 
with  a  party,  surrounded  by  a  detached  portion  of  the  family 
or  with  a  band  of  friends.  If  he  was  married,  his  wife  could 
accompany  him  without  danger  and  without  fatigue.  The 


FISHERMEN  OF  NORWAY  61 

wherry  could  hold  the  stock  of  indispensable  tools,  a  fairly  good 
supply  of  provisions,  even  a  domestic  animal  or  two.  Besides, 
as  I  said  before,  goats,  sheep,  and  cows  used  to  take  possession 
of  the  land  of  their  own  accord  without  a  guide,  like  true 
pioneers,  passing  through  the  rugged  passages  in  the  rocks  on 
the  coast.  The  new  land  was  not  far  off ;  it  was  separated 
from  the  mother  country  only  by  an  imaginary  line  ;  it  began 
at  the  headland  by  Stavanger.  The  voyage  was  easily  ac- 
complished by  short  stages.  Wherever  there  was  a  piece  of 
rising  ground  by  the  shore,  the  traveller  could  draw  up  alongside 
of  it  as  if  it  were  a  quay,  step  on  land,  pull  up  the  boat  on  to  the 
sloping  bank  at  the  edge,  turn  it  over,  and  take  shelter  under 
it.  The  boat  with  its  keel  in  air  rested  on  one  of  its  edges, 
while  the  other  was  propped  up  on  some  stakes  that  were 
chopped  from  the  branch  of  a  fir  tree  on  the  spot.  In  this  way 
the  hatchet,  the  heraldic  emblem  of  Norway,  was  first  called 
into  play.  To  render  this  shelter  still  more  perfect,  if  it  were 
necessary  to  stay  in  it  some  length  of  time,  it  could  be  put 
under  the  impermeable  covering  of  the  pine  trees ;  two  low 
walls  of  strips  of  turf  like  gable-ends  could  be  constructed  at 
the  two  extremities  of  the  half-overturned  boat,  which  formed 
the  roof  and  back  wall.  A  heap  of  resinous  wood  chips  furnished 
a  fire.  The  sea  supplied  fish,  which  could  be  caught  even  from 
the  shore.  Henceforward  the  sea  became  the  chief  and  easy 
means  of  subsistence,  the  spontaneous  source  of  food,  which 
it  yielded  to  man  without  any  long  preliminary  labour  on  his 
part.  Scenes  such  as  I  have  just  described  may  still  be  seen 
to-day  in  the  northern  parts  of  the  coast  where  settling  is  still 
going  on.  Other  things  beside  fish  can  be  obtained  for  food, 
such  as  birds  of  several  kinds,  and  wild  fruit,  which  is  fairly 
common — currants,  sloes,  blackberries,  raspberries,  strawberries, 
barberries,  wild  cherries.  But  the  sea,  the  boat,  and  the 
provisions  for  the  voyage  are  the  emigrant's  mainstay  during 
the  period  when  he  is  looking  for  a  place  that  can  supply  his 
needs  and  furnish  him  with  a  home. 

The  emigrant,  then,  pursued  his  journey  until  he  found  a 
place  where  he  could  erect  a  dwelling.  This  must  necessarily 
have  been  one  of  those  corners  of  land  fit  for  cultivation  which 
are  found  far  apart  in  the  fiords,  and  which  are  indispensable 
to  a  home,  as  the  food  can  then  be  supplemented  by  cattle 


62  THE  SEACOAST 

and  cereals,  while  wool  and  leather,  hemp  and  flax  can  be 
produced  for  clothing. 

Among  the  different  kinds  of  wood  which  the  locality  placed 
at  his  service  on  all  sides  he  found  pine-wood,  a  material  admir- 
ably suited  for  the  easy  construction  of  a  dwelling.  Its  grain 
is  rectilineal,  and  it  is  a  wood  that  is  easily  worked.  As  our 
emigrant  had  to  do  all  the  work  by  himself,  his  house  had  to  be 
limited  to  small  dimensions.  "  At  Bygdo,  in  Norway,  there 
is  to  be  seen  a  carefully  preserved  specimen  of  a  '  rogstue,'  a 
'smoky  hut,'  the  primitive  Scandinavian  house.  It  is  a  wooden 
hut  with  a  hole  in  the  pointed  roof  where  the  smoke  may  escape 
from  the  fireplace,  which  stands  on  a  stone  in  the  centre.  The 
rogstue  remained  in  use  a  very  long  time.  In  the  first  half  of 
the  eighteenth  century  every  dwelling  used  still  to  contain 
a  rogstue,  and  it  still  exists  to-day  in  Icelandic  houses."  *  The 
dwelling,  reduced  in  that  case  to  a  single  room,  is  completed 
by  the  addition  of  a  number  of  similar  structures,  each  for 
a  different  use. 

If  the  emigrant  at  the  end  of  his  search  had  stopped  at  a  place 
where  there  were  large  spaces  of  land  fit  for  cultivation  and  habi- 
tation like  those  on  the  eastern  slope,  he  would  have  infallibly 
returned  to  the  way  of  life  in  which  he  was  brought  up.  He 
would  only  have  changed  from  the  position  of  being  a  son  in  the 
family  to  that  of  the  head  of  a  family.  That  would  have  been 
the  extent  of  his  emancipation.  But  the  narrowness  of  the 
estate  which  the  cleft  in  the  rock  formed  for  him,  and  into  which 
he  made  his  way,  absolutely  prevented  him  from  reproducing 
the  type  of  family  from  which  he  sprang.  No  extension  of  the 
estate  was  possible  on  this  little  deposit  of  soil.  Cliffs  of  rock, 
bottomless  depths  of  water,  prevented  it.  He  could  not  keep  his 
children  round  him.  He  could  not  do  so,  and  their  co-operation 
was  not  necessary  to  him.  The  management  of  the  boat,  together 
with  the  cultivation  of  his  field,  in  which  his  wife  helped,  provided 
him  with  just  enough  to  do.  What  work  was  there  for  his  sons  ? 
How  could  he  multiply  his  means  of  livelihood  to  keep  pace 
with  their  number  ?  So  there  he  was,  prevented  from  establish- 
ing the  patriarchal  system  in  his  family  by  the  limits  of  the  place. 
He  was  able  to  get  there  alone  ;  he  was  also  obliged  to  remain 
there  alone.  He  was  also  cut  off  from  neighbours.  The  estates 

1  Rabot,  p.  43. 


FISHERMEN  OF  NORWAY  63 

were  as  far  apart  as  the  nooks  in  the  walls  of  the  fiord.  He  came 
to  seek  independence,  he  found  the  place  for  it :  it  was  imposed 
upon  him  to  the  end  by  the  force  of  his  surroundings.  And 
when  he  had  tasted  it  under  conditions  that  were  favourable 
both  for  him  and  his  sons,  he  never  forsook  it,  neither  did  they, 
nor  their  descendants.  The  new  type  of  family  was  fixed,  like 
all  discoveries,  by  its  proved  advantages. 

If  it  was  true  that  the  father  could  not  keep  his  sons  at 
home,  it  was  also  true  that  the  sons  were  naturally  impelled 
to  make  a  home  for  themselves  elsewhere.  The  first  son  was  as  a 
small  boy,  even  as  a  very  small  boy,  employed  to  help  his  parents 
—his  father  in  the  boat,  his  mother  in  the  care  of  the  cattle, 
both  of  them  in  the  cultivation  of  the  field.  It  was,  after  all,  an 
easy  apprenticeship  in  so  simple  a  state  of  things.  As  soon  as  a 
great  longing  for  independence  arose  in  the  youth,  he  felt  that  he 
in  his  turn  was  fit  to  do  what  his  father  had  done  before  him. 
He  was  capable  of  seeking  an  estate  of  his  own  and  making  a 
home  for  himself  with  his  own  hands.  He  had  the  same  means 
at  his  disposal  as  his  father  had.  He  knew  how  to  shape  a  boat, 
and  there  were  habitable  nooks  in  the  fiord  farther  off.  He  set 
out.  Each  son  in  turn  made  his  start  under  the  same  circum- 
stances. Thus  they  all  left  the  paternal  home  early  in  life,  prepared 
to  make  for  themselves  an  estate  of  cultivated  land. 

And  the  daughters,  what  became  of  them  ?  The  father  could 
no  more  keep  them  at  home  than  he  could  his  sons  ;  the  same 
difficulty  arose.  Each  daughter  in  turn  was  apprenticed  to  the 
work,  giving  the  mother  as  much  help  as  she  needed.  By  the 
time  they  reached  the  age  when  they  turned  their  thoughts 
towards  getting  a  home  of  their  own,  they  were  well  prepared  for 
the  energetic  and  solitary  life  without  which  it  was  impossible 
that  their  desire  could  be  fulfilled.  Their  father's  poverty  could 
give  them  no  other  dowry  than  their  equipment  and  training ; 
but  that  dowry  was  thoroughly  appreciated  by  the  young  men 
who  needed  a  capable  helpmate.  Moreover,  the  married  couple 
could  not  expect  to  have  any  other  society  than  their  own  :  they 
had  to  be  so  well  suited  as  to  be  entirely  sufficient  for  each  other. 
Hence  the  young  women  and  the  young  men  were  at  perfect 
liberty  to  choose  each  other,  without  having  to  take  into^con- 
sideration  the  opinion  of  a  large  family  group. 

In  this  way  an  entirely  new  family  organisation  was  gradually 


64  THE  SEACOAST 

developed,  an  organisation  that  is  well  named  particular  ist,  and 
which  is  in  almost  direct  opposition  in  every  point  to  that  of 
the  patriarchal  family,  and  shapes  it  to  quite  other  destinies. 

But  this  is  not  the  end.  When  the  father,  who  was  thus  left 
alone,  considered  what  was  to  become  of  his  property  at  his 
death,  he  saw  that  if  he  divided  it,  it  would  be  destroyed,  and 
that  the  portions  which  he  might  distribute  among  his  children 
would  be  useless  to  them.  His  property  was  such  that  it  could 
no  more  be  divided  than  it  could  be  extended.  Moreover,  each 
of  his  children  had  what  was  sufficient  for  his  needs.  So  he  felt 
himself  at  liberty  to  dispose  of  his  property  in  whatever  way 
was  most  convenient  for  all  parties,  without  any  reference  to  the 
theory  of  equal  division,  which  would  be  out  of  place.  In  that 
point  too  he  went  against  the  patriarchal  feeling.  He  came  to 
an  agreement  with  one  of  his  sons,  who  was  less  occupied  with  his 
own  estate,  whether  from  circumstances  or  from  his  own  desire, 
than  the  rest,  and  who  was  the  most  disposed  and  the  best  able 
to  profit  by  the  arrangement,  and  to  him  he  assigned  his  property. 
It  was  not  so  much  a  question  of  an  inheritance  as  of  a  contract. 
The  conditions  were  freely  discussed  on  both  sides.  Had  there 
been  no  paternal  affection  involved,  it  might  as  well  have  been 
a  business  affair  transacted  with  a  stranger.  In  this  way,  under 
the  pressure  of  new  conditions  of  life,  a  kind  of  mutual  inde- 
pendence sprang  up  on  all  sides,  even  in  the  heart  of  the  family, 
an  independence  both  of  will  and  deed.  The  father  ceded  the 
estate,  the  buildings,  the  fishing  implements  to  the  son  ;  but 
he  reserved  for  himself  the  rights,  as  it  were,  of  a  member  of  a 
company  who  has  funded  property  over  the  produce  of  his  son's 
labour.  His  means  of  subsistence  were  assured  to  him  for  the 
time  when  he  could  work  no  longer.  He  also  stipulated  for 
certain  benefits  for  the  rest  of  his  children,  which  the  inheritor 
had  to  grant  in  due  time,  and  which  were  calculated  according 
to  the  advantages  of  the  estate  and  the  various  situations  of 
those  who  were  to  receive  them.  The  case  of  succession  I  have 
just  described  is  the  simple  case.  Beyond  that,  arrangements 
varied.  But  they  were  always  limited  by  the  indivisibility  of 
the  estate.  Thus,  if  there  were  several  estates,  there  would 
not  be  only  one  inheritor ;  the  estates  would  be  distributed, 
but  not  divided ;  there  would  be  as  many  inheritors  as  there 
were  estates  ;  and  it  would  be  a  stipulation  that  the  other 


FISHERMEN  OF  NORWAY  65 

children  should  receive  certain  benefits  from  the  different 
estates. 

Though  the  father  ceded  his  estate,  he  still  lived  on  it.  He 
did  not,  however,  share  a  dwelling  with  his  son,  so  strong  was  the 
force  of  circumstances.  The  Norwegian  house,  as  we  have  seen, 
is  not  a  single  building.  It  is  an  aggregate  of  little  cabins  which 
together  make  up  a  complete  whole.  The  reasons  that  make 
us  determine  how  many  rooms  a  house  shall  have,  in  Norway 
determine  the  number  of  cabins.  The  aggregate  of  cabins  is 
called  the  gaard,  a  word  which  stirs  the  Norwegian  heart  as 
the  word  home  stirs  the  English  heart.  The  difficulty  of  finding 
a  place  for  constructing  a  house  accounts  for  this  arrangement. 
There  are  very  few  flat  surfaces  of  any  extent.  And,  besides, 
it  would  be  difficult  for  a  single  man  unaided  to  construct 
a  house  of  large  dimensions  and  keep  it  repaired.  Man 
must  depend  on  himself  alone  in  everything.  When  the 
son  who  inherited  the  estate  received  the  gaard,  he  had  to 
enlarge  it  by  building  a  dwelling  for  his  father :  he  did 
this  by  adding  another  cabin  to  it,  in  which  his  parents  lodged 
apart. 

It  is  indeed  a  wonderful  transformation  that  has  taken  place 
in  the  patriarchal  family.  Personal  responsibility  has  been 
pushed  to  the  extreme.  In  the  following  chapters  I  will  give 
the  reader  a  complete  picture  of  the  form  of  society  which 
developed  from  it. 

However,  I  must  stop  here  for  the  present.  I  merely  intended 
to  show  what  a  wonderful  combination  of  things  led  to  this  new 
social  state. 

But  before  terminating,  I  must  turn  back  to  the  point  from 
which  I  started,  to  make  a  final  observation.  It  also  has  to  do 
with  this  concatenation  of  circumstances. 

All  that  I  have  just  described  was  undoubtedly  the  result  of 
the  influence  of  Norway.  But  Norway  could  not  have  brought 
about  that  result  except  in  a  race  that  was  thoroughly  accus- 
tomed to  the  cultivation  of  land.  Although  fishing  in  Norway 
became  the  necessary  means  of  subsistence  and  the  great  resource 
of  that  race,  yet  it  did  not  usurp  the  place  of  the  cultivation  of 
land,  an  art  that  had  been  thoroughly  learned  in  the  land  of  the 
Goths.  The  Norwegian  fisherman  was  not  a  navigator — he 
might  become  one  accidentally ;  special  vocations  sprang  up, 
5 


66  THE  SEACOAST 

varying  in  number  according  to  the  circumstances  of  the  time — 
but  he  was,  and  would  remain,  essentially  a  peasant,  a  man 
belonging  to  the  land.  The  new  conditions  of  the  land  he  worked 
were  the  cause  of  his  entire  evolution.  And  moreover,  as  we 
shall  see,  in  spite  of  what  appears  at  first  sight,  his  evolution 
owed  a  great  deal  to  the  powerful  influence  which  the  estate  had 
upon  the  Norwegian.  When  the  Gothic  emigrant  began  to 
explore  the  resources  of  the  sea  on  the  coast  of  Norway— 
without  which  he  would  not  have  been  able  to  live,  and  which 
were  the  mainstay  of  his  independence — he  did  it  as  a  peasant, 
a  labourer,  or  a  landowner  would  do  it.  He  did  not  sail  the  high 
seas  ;  he  did  not  try  to  fish  over  the  submarine  bank ;  but  he 
found,  adjoining  his  estate,  a  stretch  of  liquid  plain  on  which 
he  went  to  and  fro  in  a  little  boat  for  only  a  few  hours  during  the 
day,  dragging  long  lines  with  several  hooks  attached  to  them,  just 
as  he  would  have  furrowed  the  solid  plain  with  the  ploughshare. 
He  was  a  real  peasant  fisherman,  whom  the  name  of  seacoast 
fisherman  suits  above  all  others,  and  to  whom  it  applies  in  a 
special  sense.  He  took  possession  of  the  marine  estate  which 
stretched  out  in  front  of  his  land  estate,  just  as  anyone  would 
take  possession  of  an  alluvial  accretion  which  might  happen  to 
augment  his  property  on  dry  land ;  it  was  literally  and  legally 
his  property.  No  one  else  except  himself  had  the  right  to  fish 
there.  This  law,  which  was  borrowed  from  that  of  the  appro- 
priation of  land,  was  so  deeply  rooted  in  his  conception  of 
the  ownership  of  land,  that  if  he  were  to  have  had  his 
estate  on  the  verge  of  the  seashore  facing  the  vast  ocean, 
he  would  not  have  hesitated  to  appropriate  the  whole 
stretch  of  sea  before  him.  That  was  the  ancient  law,  which 
has  remained  intact  till  modern  times  and  is  still  in  force  to 
a  great  extent. 

So  the  small,  narrow  estate  of  the  fiord  in  the  hands  of 
the  Gothic  emigrant,  the  seacoast  fisherman,  took  precedence 
over  the  open  sea,  which  it  made  subject  to  its  own  laws.  At 
the  same  time  it  caused  its  owner  to  leave  the  patriarchal  and 
found  the  particularist  form  of  society.  Among  the  races  that 
are  the  inheritors  of  that  form  of  society — the  Saxons,  the 
Franks,  the  English,  the  Americans — we  shall  see  how  the  estate 
exerts  a  more  powerful  influence  than  a  great  number  of  other 
forces. 


FISHERMEN  OF  NORWAY  67 

But,  first  of  all,  we  must  look  at  the  new  form  of 
society  which  the  transformation,  simultaneously  brought 
about  in  the  family  and  in  the  estate  by  the  influence 
of  local  conditions,  engendered  among  this  Norwegian 
people. 


CHAPTER   IV 
THE  SEACOAST  FISHERMEN  OF  NORWAY— Continued 

"VTOW  that  I  have  described  in  some  detail  the  origin  and 
-i-M  first  steps  in  the  development  of  the  particularist  form  of 
society,  I  propose  to  trace  out  its  development  through  history 
up  to  the  present  time. 

So  extensive  a  subject  ought,  I  think,  to  be  presented  in 
as  didactic  and  concise  a  form  as  possible,  in  order  that  the 
reader  may  be  able  to  get  a  complete  grasp  of  it.  The  proof 
of  my  statements  about  the  great  social  phenomenon  which 
I  am  going  to  trace  throughout  its  development  will  lie  in  the 
well-known  character  of  the  facts,  in  their  strict  scientific 
sequence,  and  in  the  reader's  own  experiences,  which  will  come  to 
confirm  them  on  all  points. 

It  is  a  fact  which  constantly  recurs,  that  the  natural  for- 
mation of  every  locality  brings  about  a  social  transformation 
in  immigrants  to  whom  it  is  new,  and  that  this  transformation 
is  relative  to  the  habits  of  life  they  have  previously  acquired 
under  the  influence  of  the  natural  surroundings  of  one  or  more 
other  localities. 

The  form  of  society  which  our  Gothic  immigrants  of  the 
western  slope  brought  with  them  from  the  other  slope  was  that 
of  peasants  who  were  progressive  agriculturists,  belonging 
to  families  which  were  still  patriarchal  though  of  a  very  much 
modified  type.  The  transformation  they  underwent  in  the 
precipitous  fiords  of  Norway  resulted  in  a  complete  rupture 
with  the  communal  system. 

The  new  lands  they  had  to  cultivate,  scattered  here  and 
there  on  narrow  accretions  of  soil,  could  neither  be  extended 
to  supply  the  needs  of  more  than  one  household  and  its  young 
children,  nor  be  divided  to  any  purpose  between  the  scattered 
heirs.  Each  adult  son  in  his  turn  was  obliged  to  look  for  some 

68 


FISHERMEN  OF  NORWAY  69 

habitable  nook  in  the  recesses  of  that  rocky  land,  and  to 
accustom  himself  to  do  without  the  help  which  is  afforded  by  the 
association  of  individuals,  and  to  depend  on  that  "  self-help  " 
which  is  acquired  by  the  personal  development  of  an  estate. 

There  was  no  law  of  inheritance  with  regard  to  property, 
but  a  private  contract  was  usually  made  in  which  the  father, 
on  reaching  old  age  and  being  desirous  of  having  a  partner, 
agreed,  as  if  in  a  free  covenant,  to  transmit  his  property  to  that 
one  of  his  married  sons  who  might  happen  to  be  the  most  ready 
to  accept  an  agreement  of  that  kind,  at  the  cost  of  bestowing 
some  smaller  advantages  upon  his  brothers  and  sisters.  This 
custom,  by  the  way,  still  continues  in  spite  of  all  written  law. 

All  this  was  necessitated  by  the  nature  of  tJie  cultivable 
land ;  the  spirit  of  independence,  and  the  ability  possessed  by 
the  immigrants  who  had  come  from  a  progressive  society, 
predisposed  them  for  it.  Three  things,  moreover  which  pro- 
ceeded from  their  maritime  surroundings,  rendered  it  possible — 

1.  The  small  boat,  a  means  of  transport  that  could  be 
managed  by  one  person,  and  was  easy  to  use  for  getting  about 
to  all  parts  of  the  country  in  the  sheltered  waters  of  the  skjaer- 
gaard  and  the  fiords. 

2.  The  fishery,  that  could  be  worked  by  one  person,  and 
was  actually  at  the  edge  of  his  estate,  penetrating  even  into 
the  most  remote  corner  of  the  land,  and  containing  an  unheard- 
of  abundance  of  fish,  which  came  from  the  great  Norwegian 
bank.      Fish,  which  was  a  natural  product,  was  a  necessity,  so 
long  as  nothing  could  be  obtained  from  the  land,  and  it  after- 
wards supplemented  the  land  produce. 

3.  The  instruments  for  fishing,  that  could  be  handled  by 
one  person — the  small  boat  and  the  trailing  or  stationary  line. 

The  effect  on  private  life  of  a  new  art  of  obtaining  food — 
namely,  seacoast  fishing — is  shown  in  these  facts.  This  new 
art  is  responsible  for  the  transformation  of  a  peasant  of  Eastern 
Scandinavia,  a  solitary  emigrant  from  the  patriarchal  home, 
into  a  peasant  fisherman  of  the  west  coast,  the  head  of  a  particu- 
larist  family. 

Such  a  transformation  is  extraordinary,  since  it  means  that 
the  family,  the  basis  of  all  social  organisation,  has  passed,  not 
from  one  variety  to  another,  but  from  one  genus  to  another, 
from  a  way  of  life  founded  on  the  association  of  persons  to  one 


70  THE  SEACOAST 

founded  on  the  ability  of  the  individual  to  create  a  home  for  himself. 
By  following  the  history  of  the  emigrants  that  became  "  par- 
ticularists  "  in  the  same  way  as  we  traced  their  history  under 
the  patriarchal  system  of  life  from  the  Aralo-Caspian  basin, 
we  shall  see  the  development  of  all  the  consequences  of  this 
change. 

But  before  transporting  this  particularist  family  to  other 
parts,  where  it  will  find  other  arts  of  obtaining  food  and  other 
means  of  transport,  we  ought  to  examine  the  effect  of  its  mode 
of  living  upon  public  life,  in  the  locality  to  which  we  have  just 
followed  it — that  is,  in  Western  Scandinavia,  on  the  shores  of 
the  North  Sea. 

The  effect  is  simple  :  public  life  is  abolished ;  private  life, 
which  is  all-sufficient  to  itself,  has  triumphed  absolutely. 

We  have  just  seen  how  the  small  boat  and  seacoast  fishing 
enabled  each  individual  emigrant  to  live  alone,  by  giving  him 
the  means  of  making  a  home  for  himself  with  his  own  hands, 
and  since  these  two  things  put  an  end  to  family  life  of  the 
communal  type,  with  all  the  more  reason  did  they  cut  short 
public  communal  life.  They  enabled  the  peasant  fisherman 
to  do  without  a  community,  nay,  even  to  do  without  a  neighbour 
and  a  master. 

So  it  must  be  well  understood  that  the  small  boat  serves 
rather  to  isolate  than  to  unite  the  Norwegians.  All  the  facts 
go  to  strengthen  our  belief  in  this.  What  strikes  us  about 
them  is,  not  that  they  live  in  an  aggregation  on  the  seashore 
and  in  the  fiords,  as  if  they  were  in  a  public  square  or  in  the 
streets  ;  not  their  facility  for  gathering  together  from  all  sides  ; 
but,  on  the  contrary,  their  power  of  living  alone,  in  isolation. 
It  is  a  very  marked  characteristic  among  the  Norwegians. 

In  the  isolation  created  by  fishing  from  small  boats,  what 
sort  of  institution  will  grow  up  to  take  the  place  of  the  community 
and  the  public  life  that  have  passed  away  ? 

The  answer  is  :  the  small  estate,  that  has  to  be  transmitted 
in  its  entirety. 

In  the  system  of  small  estates  and  associated  heirs  (associe- 
hdritier)  this  isolated  peasant  will  find  the  most  perfect  organi- 
sation of  his  independence,  the  two  most  efficacious  means  by 
which  he  may  be  directly  self-sufficient. 

But  why  not  in  actual  fishing  ?     Fishing  is  his  mainstay 


FISHERMEN  OF  NORWAY  71 

while  he  is  developing  his  estate,  and  afterwards  it  supplements 
the  produce  of  the  land.  Further,  it  is  the  mainstay  of  his 
sons  while  in  their  turn  they  are  developing  new  estates,  and 
afterwards  supplements  the  produce  of  their  fields.  But  fishing 
can  be  no  more  than  a  means  and  a  supplement.  The  reason 
is  obvious.  Fishing  is  inferior  to  other  means  of  living  in  so 
far  as  it  provides  only  a  very  special  kind  of  food.  It  satisfies 
only  one  need — that  of  food — and  moreover,  satisfies  it  very 
incompletely.  Other  arts  for  obtaining  food  provide  all  that 
is  necessary  for  nourishment,  and  incidentally  satisfy  other 
needs  :  the  nomadic  pastoral  art,  for  example,  provides  mare's 
milk,  a  complete  form  of  nourishment,  and  also  skins  and 
fleeces  for  housing  and  clothing ;  or  again,  the  sedentary 
pastoral  art  provides  cow's  milk,  meat,  and  the  vegetables 
produced  by  a  rudimentary  form  of  agriculture  ;  or  again, 
the  cultivation  of  land,  properly  so  called,  provides  similar 
things  and  cereals  in  addition ;  and  these  two  latter  arts  sup- 
ply wood  and  material  from  the  earth  for  building  purposes, 
as  well  as  animal  and  vegetable  tissues  for  clothing.  But  fish — 
at  any  rate  the  small  kinds  that  are  caught  by  seacoast  fisher- 
men— are  insufficient  as  food  and  of  no  use  for  housing  and 
clothing. 

So,  though  seacoast  fishing  provided  a  convenient,  easy, 
and  abundant  means  of  living,  yet  it  was  insufficient,  and 
satisfied  no  other  needs.  For  this  reason  those  engaged  in 
it  were  obliged  to  revert  to  the  care  of  a  domain. 

There  are  therefore  two  conclusions  to  be  drawn  :  the  small 
estate  is  necessary  to  supplement  the  fishing  ;  and  the  small  estate 
takes  precedence  over  the  fishing. 

We  now  know  the  secret  of  that  powerful  instinct  which 
compelled  the  men  of  the  north  to  "  acquire  lands."  We 
know  the  secret  of  the  evolution  which,  after  having  trans- 
formed the  peasant  belonging  to  a  patriarchal  family  into  a 
seacoast  fisherman,  transformed  the  seacoast  fisherman  into 
a  simple  peasant  with  a  particularist  family.  The  small  estate 
and  the  system  of  the  associated  heir  form  the  twofold  insti- 
tution which,  for  him,  will  completely  and  definitively  take  the 
place  of  the  private  community,  and,  as  much  as  possible,  of 
every  kind  of  public  community.  He  will  strive  to  make  this 
institution  take  the  place  even  of  seacoast  fishing,  which 


72  THE  SE  AGO  AST, 

was  his  mainstay  in  the  first  instance  and  was  found  incom- 
plete. 

This  movement,  which  has  animated  all  the  men  of  the 
north  throughout  history,  is  the  same  which  animates  the 
whole  Norwegian  world  at  the  present  day.  It  encourages 
the  development  of  land  cultivation  in  Norway  in  the  interior 
of  the  country.  There  is  no  longer  as  much  need  as  before  to 
go  and  seek  better  land  in  other  countries.  It  is  often  observed 
that  seacoast  fishermen  leave  the  north  to  go  to  the  cultivated 
lands  of  the  south,  while  those  from  the  fiords  go  up  to  the 
fields  in  the  mountain  valleys.  It  is  the  same  movement  which 
compels  the  Norwegian  seacoast  fisherman,  when  he  cannot 
easily  obtain  land,  to  turn  to  maritime  commerce  and  to  the 
cultivation  of  wood  with  the  purpose  of  saving  money  for  a 
more  costly  estate.  The  small  estate  that  can  be  transmitted 
only  in  its  entirety  is  capable  of  constituting  the  complete 
kingdom  of  the  isolated  Norwegian  and  of  making  him  and 
his  single  household  absolutely  independent.  While  things  are 
still  in  that  elementary  condition,  it  is  possible  for  a  single 
household  to  form  a  complete  society,  which  is  self -sufficient. 
Neither  a  community  nor  public  life  is  necessary. 

This  state  of  affairs  seems  to  be  the  outcome  of  the  patri- 
archal family  of  the  nomadic  shepherd,  which  in  its  own  way 
forms  a  complete  society.  Indeed,  it  is  at  the  same  time 
its  outcome  and  its  counterpart.  Though  it  may  be  said  of 
the  nomadic  patriarchal  system,  "  Public  life  is  there  unneces- 
sary," yet  it  cannot  be  said,  "  It  has  no  community."  That  is 
the  source  of  the  fundamental  difference  between  the  patri- 
archal and  the  particularist  systems  which  will  be  revealed 
throughout  the  whole  development  of  society.  The  patri- 
archal system  is  founded  on  the  enforced  community  of  people, 
and  no  land  is  owned  except  through  the  community :  the 
community  owns  the  land,  distributes  it  for  cultivation,  and 
periodically  resumes  the  control  of  it.  The  particularist  system, 
on  the  contrary,  is  founded  on  the  direct  ownership  of  the  land, 
and  rejects  the  enforced  community  of  persons. 

Once  the  reader  has  thoroughly  grasped  that  the  particu- 
larist form  of  society  is  a  system  based  upon  independence  and 
founded  on  the  following  things  :  namely,  on  seacoast  fishing 
at  the  start ;  ultimately  on  the  estate  heritable  only  in  its 


FISHERMEN  OF  NORWAY  73 

entirety,  and  on  the  ease  with  which  it  can  be  acquired  ;  once 
he  has  grasped  this,  he  will  find  that  it  contains  the  key  to  the 
history,  the  institutions,  the  manner  of  thinking  and  acting 
of  the  particularist  races.  There  is  no  essential  characteristic 
in  their  life  that  cannot  be  referred  to  that  fundamental 
principle. 

Among  these  races,  independence  upon  a  small  estate,  and 
the  supremacy  of  the  small  estate,  are  the  two  factors  which 
dominate  the  very  usages  of  public  life,  and,  on  occasion, 
entirely  supersede  them. 

At  the  start,  Norway  literally  belonged  to  the  type  I  have 
described.  Later  on,  life  there  became  more  complicated, 
though  not  really  so  to  any  great  extent.  The  following  causes 
tended  to  make  it  less  simple  : 

1.  The  activity  of  other  races,  which  established  relations 
with  Norway. 

2.  The  development  of  other  arts  besides  seacoast  fishing — 
the  natural  result  of  intercourse  with  foreigners. 

However,  Norway  did  not  lose  much  of  its  simplicity,  for 
the  reason  that  the  fundamental  basis  of  its  way  of  life,  the 
small  estate,  could  not  change.  It  could  not  change  : 

1.  Because  the  poverty  of  the  soil  continued  to  make  culti- 
vation on  a  small  scale  much  easier  than  cultivation  on  a  large 
scale. 

2.  Because  seacoast    fishing  continued  to  encourage    the 
emigration  of  those  who  did  not  wish  to  increase  their  father's 
estate,  even  where  it  was  possible,  and  who  wanted  to  get 
estates  of  their  own. 

So  that  the  independence  of  the  peasant  in  his  gaard 
really  represents  the  fundamental  form  of  government  in 
Norway  at  the  present  time  as  in  the  beginning.  The  rest  is 
only  a  very  secondary  and  quite  subordinate  addition. 

The  Norwegian  is  so  self-sufficient  that  even  in  his  private 
life  he  very  seldom  forms  associations,  however  free  they  may 
be  and  however  well  qualified  he  may  be  to  form  them,  as  the 
associations  for  deep-sea  fishing  show. 

He  is  inclined  to  make  use  of  association  only  where  it 
is  absolutely  necessary  :  the  associations  that  he  forms  for 
deep-sea  fishing  are  only  temporary,  and  renewable  at  every 
expedition.  In  the  fish  trade  he  prefers  to  sell  to  large  foreign 


74  THE  SEACOAST 

merchants  rather  than  organise  societies  for  selling  fish,  not 
only  because  he  has  the  good  sense  to  see  that  an  association 
cannot  compete  with  large  individual  enterprise,  but  because 
he  prefers  to  have  a  free  power  of  acting,  to  be  independent. 

For  still  stronger  reasons,  he  is  very  loath  to  accept  enforced 
association,  the  association  which  constitutes  public  life  pro- 
perly so  called,  and  he  strives  to  reduce  it  to  its  simplest  con- 
ditions. The  history  of  the  past  and  the  situation  of  the 
present  day  in  Norway  in  this  respect  may  be  summed  up 
in  four  statements  : 

1.  In  any  conflict  which  a  Norwegian  may  happen  to  have 
with  any  of  his  neighbours,  who  are  as  independent  as  himself, 
he  does  not  approve  of  the  intervention  of  any  superior  authority, 
but  likes  direct  settlement :    some  agreement  must  be  made 
as  between  two  independent  powers. 

In  the  past  it  was  owing  to  this  peculiarity  that  the  system 
of  settling  disputes  by  a  covenant,  an  arrangement  by  which 
one  party  comes  to  terms,  makes  a  compromise,  with  the 
other,  was  far  more  popular  among  the  Scandinavians  than 
among  the  other  barbarians. 

In  the  present  day  the  same  tendency  is  shown  by  the  use 
of  a  system  of  conciliation,  by  means  of  which  nine  out  of 
ten  disputes  are  amicably  settled.  The  conciliation  court 
is  formed  of  two  private  men  elected  by  the  people,  and  of 
one  man  of  eminence,  who  is  appointed  by  the  king  and  can 
be  called  on  to  resign  only  by  a  royal  decision. 

2.  The  Norwegians  opposed  all  interventions  of  superior 
force,  by  which  attempts  were  made  to  impose  a  government 
upon  them,   by  simply  pursuing   their  independent  life,   by 
continuing  to  act  as  before,  and  leaving  the  government  to 
fall  flat  from  want  of  support  and  from  want  of  co-operation. 

In  the  past  we  know  how  the  pirate  chiefs,  who  tried  to 
make  themselves  royal  potentates  in  Norway  itself,  found 
themselves  face  to  face  with  their  empty  claims  :  nothing 
happened.  Only  two  counties  have  been  known  to  exist  in 
Norway,  those  of  Laurvik  and  Jarlsberg,  and  one  barony, 
that  of  Rosendal.  Furthermore,  these  attempts  at  feudalism 
were  of  no  political  import.  During  the  time  when  a  king  was 
recognised  by  the  nation,  from  the  ninth  to  the  fourteenth 
century,  the  royal  government  had  chiefly  to  do  with  foreign 


FISHERMEN  OF  NORWAY  75 

affairs,  contended  with  pirates,  and  if  it  sometimes  increased 
the  safety  of  the  interior  by  certain  measures,  it  did  not  inter- 
fere with  the  independence  of  the  peasant.  When  a  foreign 
king  occupied  the  throne,  the  people  preserved  the  fundamental 
element  of  their  constitution  in  their  homes,  just  as  the  Saxons 
did  in  England,  as  we  shall  see,  when  they  were  under  foreign 
rule. 

At  the  present  time1  the  Swedish  king  is  only  nominally 
king  of  Norway,  an  arrangement  that  was  made  by  the  Powers 
in  1814  merely  for  diplomatic  reasons  and  in  order  to  combine 
the  nations.  Norway  is  in  reality  a  republic,  and  at  the  outset 
it  insisted  on  safeguards  against  the  royal  power. 

3.  The  Norwegians  have  further  shown  themselves  very 
cautious  in  the  formation  of  a  central  power  emanating  from 
the  people  themselves.  In  their  eyes,  so-called  public  interests 
are,  without  exception,  subordinate  to  private  and  local  interests. 

They  remained  for  a  long  time  in  the  past  without  even  an 
elective  government ;  at  first  they  had  no  assembly  at  all. 
Their  first  assemblies  only  represented  districts  :  they  were 
four  in  number.  But  instead  of  going  to  attend  them  in  person, 
according  to  the  law,  they  used,  for  the  most  part,  to  send 
delegates  to  represent  them. 

At  the  present  time  the  central  assembly,  the  "  Storthing," 
cannot  sit  for  more  than  two  months.  Its  ordinary  work  con- 
sists in  granting  the  royal  administration  the  right  to  undertake 
certain  works  for  the  public  service  which  local  authorities  are 
incapable  of  initiating,  and  afterwards  in  withdrawing  that  right 
as  soon  as  the  local  authorities  have  benefited  by  the  example 
and  are  capable  of  undertaking  the  works  themselves.  That 
is  what  happened,  among  other  things,  in  the  still  recent  case  of 
the  construction  of  the  public  roads. 

"  A  law  of  September  16,  1851,  took  away  from  the  Govern- 
ment the  power  of  constructing  roads  and  of  imposing  the  taxes 
necessary  for  the  purpose  without  the  vote  of  the  Storthing  ;  it 
also  deprived  the  magistrates  of  that  power  in  favour  of  the 
municipal  councils  which  were  formed  in  each  '  commune,' 
according  to  the  law  on  councils  of  the  year  1837,  and  nominated 
by  the  citizens  who  had  the  right  to  vote.  ...  It  was  after  the 

1  Since  tLis  was  written  the  Union  of  Norway  and  Sweden  under  one  king 
has  been  dissolved  (1905). — TRANSLATOR. 


76  THE  SE  AGO  AST: 

law  of  1851  on  roads  and  bridges  had  transferred  the  power  of 
imposing  taxes  for  the  construction  of  roads  from  the  Govern- 
ment to  the  Storthing  and  from  the  magistrates  to  the  municipal 
councils,  that  an  improvement  was  observed  in  the  means  of 
communication.  So  it  was  obvious  that  it  was  far  better  and 
more  advantageous  that  the  people  should  impose  their  own 
taxes."  l 

We  know  what  efforts  Norway  is  making  at  the  present  time 
to  reassume  in  a  measure  the  management  of  its  international 
affairs,  by  separating  its  consulates  "from  those  of  Sweden. 

4.  The  expansion  of  the  race  is  going  on  and  is  aided  by 
private  enterprise  and  not  by  the  power  of  the  State. 

In  the  past  the  small  boat  was  the  means  by  which  individuals 
emigrated  one  by  one,  and  gradually  made  small  estates  in  all 
the  inlets  of  the  Scandinavian  coast  along  the  North  Sea,  as  far 
as  the  base  of  the  Danish  peninsula  and  the  beginning  of  the 
Saxon  plain.  This  southern  limit  was  also  fairly  near  the  place 
from  which  the  first  immigrants  from  Gothland,  from  the 
Danish  archipelago,  and  also,  of  course,  from  the  eastern  side 
of  Jutland,  set  out. 

On  reaching  the  Saxon  plain,  the  seacoast  fisherman  found 
himself  on  new  territory  and  in  surroundings  very  different  from 
those  of  the  Scandinavian  coast.  In  coming  there  the  par- 
ticularist  family  passed  without  effort  to  a  new  stage  of  its 
development.  There  we  shall  begin  to  see,  if  we  proceed  as  we 
have  done  hitherto  from  like  to  like,  and  follow  the  smallest 
causes  of  modification,  the  evolutions  of  the  powerful  social  type 
whose  curious  and  picturesque  genesis  we  now  know. 

At  the  present  time  the  Americans  of  the  Far  West  get  the 
majority  of  their  foreign  recruits,  who  are  not  conveyed 
thither  by  any  state  organisation,  from  among  the  emigrants 
from  Norway.  Their  assimilation  with  the  Yankees  seems  as 
if  pre-established.  It  would  appear  strange  that  the  people 
who  are  apparently  the  least  progressive  in  Europe  should 
be  the  best  suited  for  the  most  advanced  posts  of  the  United 
States,  if  the  researches  of  Social  Science  had  not  made  it 
clear  that  it  is  simply  a  case  of  two  branches  from  the  same 
stock  being  grafted  together.  No  one  who  looks  about  him 
attentively  on  a  visit  to  the  Norwegian  world  can  help  being 

1  Broch,  Le  Eoyaume  de  Norvige,  pp.  148,  450. 


FISHERMEN  OF  NORWAY  77 

astonished  to  see  how  this  little  country,  with  its  ancient 
traditions  and  primitive  ways,  exhibits,  as  compared  with 
all  the  other  European  people,  the  most  obvious  and  un- 
questionable points  of  resemblance  with  the  social  type  of 
the  newest  countries  of  the  West.  But  I  have  let  slip  the 
answer  to  my  riddle  ! 


CHAPTER   V 

THE  SAXON 

Danish  peninsula  to  the  south  of  Norway  did  not 
~L  offer  the  seacoast  fishermen  a  sufficient  field  for  expansion 
towards  the  south.  The  narrow  and  unproductive  shores  of 
the  north  and  west  of  Denmark,  which  were  constantly  inundated 
by  the  sea  to  a  dangerous  extent,  did  not  favour  the  settlement 
of  a  people  who  were  destined  to  become  agriculturists. 
But,  at  any  rate,  the  road  along  the  coast,  which  was  only 
thinly  populated,  was  open  for  them. 

It  must  not  be  imagined  that  the  peninsula  of  Jutland  was 
the  same  in  the  remote  times  of  which  we  are  speaking  as  it  is 
to-day,  but  it  must  be  inferred,  from  the  geographical  trans- 
formations which  it  undergoes  at  the  present  time,  that  it  was 
subject  to  similar  transformations  in  ancient  times,  as  certain 
traces  show.  The  following  are  some  examples  of  natural 
disturbances  it  has  undergone  :  "  The  thread  of  land  which 
hems  in  the  basin  of  the  Liim  Fiord  in  Denmark  has  been  re- 
peatedly broken  during  storms,"  says  Reclus,  "  notably  in  the 
years  1624,  1720,  and  1760.  On  the  28th  of  November  in  1825, 
at  the  time  when  terrible  inundations  caused  much  damage  to 
all  the  low-lying  coasts  on  the  North  Sea  and  flooded  the  Water- 
land  in  Holland,  from  Amsterdam  to  Alkmaar,  the  outer  shore 
of  the  Liim  Fiord  gave  way  under  the  pressure  of  the  water, 
and  the  inland  waters  became  joined  to  the  sea  by  one  of  the 
numerous  nymindes  (new  mouths)  which  have  made  openings 
for  themselves  on  the  coast  of  Jutland.  Before  the  opening 
was  made  by  the  rupture  at  Agger,  all  the  western  part  of  the 
Liim  Fiord  was  filled  with  fresh  water ;  but  as  the  salt  waves 
beat  in  from  the  sea,  and  a  current  was  established  between 
sea  and  sea,  the  composition  of  all  the  water  in  the  strait 
became  changed.  Sea  fish  penetrated  right  up  it  in  shoals, 


THE  SAXON  79 

and  the  amount  of  salt  in  all  parts  of  it  must  have  exceeded 
18  per  1000  at  least,  since  oyster  beds  were  formed  here  and 
there."  l 

Inside  the  narrow  strips  of  sand  which  to-day  form  the 
coast,  the  original  coast-line  is  distinctly  visible,  penetrating 
with  an  irregular  outline  into  the  interior  of  the  land,  after  the 
manner  of  fiords.  The  immense  inland  lakes  that  are  now 
shut  in  by  these  long  sandy  bands  are  ancient  gulfs  of  salt 
water,  which  the  water  brought  down  by  rivers  as  well  as  the 
rain  have  changed  into  fresh-water  basins,  and  which  are 
gradually  being  filled  up  by  alluvial  soil.  They  are  already 
quite  shallow,  and  some  of  them  even  have  muddy  bottoms, 
which  are  submerged  or  dry,  according  to  the  seasons  and  the 
weather ;  however,  there  are  still  navigable  channels,  narrow 
dikes,  which  wind  along  in  the  midst  of  muddy  shoals,  which 
enable  small  vessels  to  get  about.  Some  islands  have  become 
part  of  the  mainland.  There  are  some  villages  inland  which 
bear  names  ending  in  "  oe  "  (islands),  indicating  their  ancient 
insular  character.2 

Though  this  region  is  pierced  by  arms  of  the  sea,  yet  it  is 
very  different  from  Norway  ;  above  all,  because  it  affords  fewer 
opportunities  for  farming  and  for  the  cultivation  of  small 
estates.  However,  it  formed  a  passage,  an  open  door,  for  the 
seacoast  fishermen.  It  often  happens  that  there  are  vast 
stretches  of  land  bordering  on  the  territory  of  expanding  races, 
over  which  they  could  not  spread  with  advantage  but  which 
they  could  cross  with  ease  and  rapidity,  in  order  to  gain  more 
propitious  lands  beyond. 

The  seacoast  fishermen  of  Norway  would  naturally  cross 
to  Jutland  by  the  great  sea  passage  of  the  Skager  Eak,  which 
is  entirely  free  of  reefs  and  is  partially  sheltered  from  the  most 
dangerous  winds  by  the  high  land  of  Southern  Norway.3 
The  fiords — or,  more  correctly,  the  straits — which  formerly 
crossed  the  peninsula  from  side  to  side  and  from  top  to 
bottom,  and  were  broader  than  they  are  now,  open  into  the 
Skager  Kak,  which  washes  the  northern  shores  of  Denmark. 
The  fish  of  the  North  Sea  came  there  in  great  numbers,  though 
they  were  not  so  abundant  as  in  Norway,  and  still  continue 

1  Reclus,  IS  Europe  scandinave  et  russe,  p.  10. 
a/6«a.  pp.  8,  11.  *Ibid.  p.  12. 


80  THE  SAXON 

to  flock  into  all  the  openings  that  are  left  or  that  become 
formed  in  the  strip  of  sand  that  now  represents  the  coast- 
line. 

The  present  state  of  things,  as  Reclus  describes  it,  gives  a 
fairly  good  idea  of  what  the  land  was  like  in  ancient  times  : 
"  The  Liim  Fiord,"  he  says  (the  great  fiord  of  Denmark,  which 
most  of  the  other  fiords  join),  "  is  an  inland  lake  and  at  the 
same  time  an  arm  of  the  sea.  It  crosses  the  whole  peninsula 
of  Jutland  from  side  to  side,  and  is  formed  of  distinct  parts, 
which  together  cover  an  area  'oj  450  square  miles.  On  the 
west  it  is  a  vast  inland  lake  (formerly  a  fiord)  hemmed  in  by 
the  seacoast,  a  narrow  thread  of  sand,  which  trembles  at  the  shock 
of  the  waves  and  which  is  less  than  half  a  mile  in  breadth  in 
several  parts.  At  its  eastern  extremity  there  is  a  narrow  canal 
connecting  it  with  a  labyrinth  of  lakes  abounding  in  fish,  which 
surround  the  large  island  of  Mors  and  a  whole  archipelago  of 
islets,  and  which  then  unite  in  an  inland  sea  of  more  than  180 
square  miles,  separated  from  the  Skager  Rak  by  a  mere  thread  of 
sand-hills,  and  ramifying  for  a  long  distance  towards  the  south 
in  gulfs  and  bays"  1 

This,  then,  is  the  passage,  though  it  had  very  different  open- 
ings in  those  days,  which  would  have  seemed  to  the  Norwegians 
the  most  eminently  practicable  for  travelling  south.  It  was 
suitable  for  their  means  of  transport,  the  small  boat,  and 
offered  them  seacoast  fishing,  a  means  of  living  much  valued 
by  them. 

So  we  now  have  a  knowledge  of  the  coast  of  Denmark  as 
well  as  of  that  of  Norway,  as  regards  the  points  which  have 
most  to  do  with  our  investigation  concerning  the  propagation 
of  the  particularist  type  of  society. 

South  of  the  Danish  peninsula,  beyond  the  Elbe,  the  aspect 
of  the  land  changes.  We  come  to  the  Saxon  plain.  The  sea 
is  still  the  North  Sea  ;  the  land  is  still  poor — nothing  but  a  moor 
by  the  sea.  But  the  waters  withdraw,  so  to  speak,  from  the 
middle  of  the  land — they  no  longer  penetrate  so  far  into  it — and 
the  low-lying  lands  on  the  coast  expand,  widen,  and  curve  out, 
forming  a  vast  gulf  in  the  mainland. 

So,  back  with  the  sea,  and  room  for  the  land  !  That  is  the 
great  change.  Though  the  land  is  by  nature  really  the  same 
1  Reclus,  L' 'Europe  scandinave  et  russe,  p.  9. 


THE  SAXON  81 

in  some  ways  as  that  of  the  western  slope  of  Denmark,  yet  it 
differs  in  so  far  as  it  is  less  broken  up  by  the  sea  and  is  more 
extensive. 

Here,  in  the  low  plains  of  the  Weser  and  the  Ems,  between 
the  Elbe  and  the  Bourtanger  Moor,  now  the  frontier  of  Holland, 
the  movement  will  take  place  which  will  make  the  seacoast 
fishermen  turn  away  from  the  sea  into  the  interior  of  the  main- 
land. 

The  locality  is  well  adapted  to  bring  about  this  trans- 
formation. The  following  passage  from  Reclus  reveals  its 
main  characteristic  :  "To  the  east  of  the  Ems  there  are 
several  moors  which  cover  thousands  of  acres  at  one  stretch  : 
Saterland,  and  the  country  of  Arenberg,  which  occupy  a  large 
part  of  the  triangular  space  in  Oldenburg  and  Hanover,  formed 
by  the  course  of  the  Ems  and  the  Leda,  are  much  more  ex- 
tensive than  many  a  German  principality.  To  the  east  of 
the  Weser,  the  river  Hamme  traverses  one  of  these  marshy 
regions,  certainly  one  of  the  most  remarkable  in  Europe,  for 
the  soil,  though  it  has  been  already  brought  under  cultivation, 
still  floats  in  a  spongy  mass  on  the  surface  of  the  water  in 
several  places.  At  the  time  of  the  melting  of  the  snows,  when 
the  Hamme  and  the  many  lakes  formed  along  its  course  are 
full,  all  the  low  lands  of  the  neighbourhood  are  swollen 
by  the  floods ;  but  while  the  firmer  lands  allow  themselves 
to  be  covered  by  the  rising  waters,  others  become  detached 
from  the  beds  upon  which  they  had  foundered  like  ships, 
and  rise  little  by  little,  lifting  the  trees  and  the  crops  upon 
their  surface.  After  prolonged  cultivation  the  balance  of 
these  light  lands  is  disturbed,  and  they  settle  down  permanently 
on  the  bottom  of  the  marsh.  To  the  north  of  the  marshy 
lands  lies  the  region  of  the  geest,  or  gast,  where  the  soil 
is  ordinarily  composed  of  thick  layers  of  sand  covering  clay 
and  chalk.  As  a  whole,  the  land  of  the  geest  has  a  very  uneven 
surface,  and  in  places  appears  almost  mountainous  to  those 
that  live  among  the  marshes  or  on  the  coast ;  but  several 
of  the  hollows  have  been  filled  up  with  peat.  In  places  where 
rivers  have  hollowed  out  broad  valleys  for  themselves,  and 
washed  away  the  upper  layer  of  sand  from  the  geest,  the  clay 
and  chalk  that  the  stream  has  laid  bare  form  a  good  and  fertile 
soil,  rendered  all  the  more  productive  because  it  is  mixed 
6 


82  THE  SAXON 

with  soil  brought  down  from  a  distance  by  the  streams.  In 
other  parts  the  different  kinds  of  soil  are  so  near  together 
that  the  labourer  can  easily  mix  them  so  as  to  form  a  good 
soil  for  agriculture. 

"To  the  east  of  the  great  Hanoverian  plain,  the  moors  of 
Luneburg  are  merely  the  continuation  of  the  region  of  the 
geest  in  an  easterly  direction.  They  form  one  of  the  least 
picturesque  districts  of  Germany — one  of  those  places  that  is 
always  spoken  of  with  irony,  though  it  too  has  its  beauties, 
its  pink  flowers,  its  little  clumps  of  trees,  its  ravines,  its  bound- 
less horizon. 

"During  the  period  which  has  elapsed  since  the  fights 
between  the  Romans  and  the  Germans,  the  outline  of  the  coast 
of  Germany  on  the  North  Sea  has  very  much  changed.  That 
immense  stretch  of  land  reclaimed  from  the  sea,  which  forms 
the  whole  of  the  region  of  Hanover  to  the  north  of  Hesse  and 
the  Harz,  has  been  nibbled  away  at  the  coast,  and  the  ocean 
has  regained  a  portion  of  its  empire,  and  has  advanced  a 
good  distance  into  the  land.  The  annals  of  the  Middle  Ages 
relate  the  terrible  disasters  caused  by  the  sudden  irruptions 
of  the  sea.  But  though  the  sea  besets  the  land,  yet,  on 
the  other  hand,  natural  causes  are  at  work  to  increase  man's 
domain  at  the  expense  of  the  ocean  and  to  give  him  excellent 
alluvial  lands  with  an  average  depth  of  32  to  39  feet.  In  all  the 
places  where  fresh  water  mingles  with  salt  water — that  is  to  say, 
in  the  estuaries  of  the  Ems  and  the  Weser,  as  well  as  in  the  mouths 
of  the  small  rivers  in  that  region — particles  of  earth  suspended 
in  the  water  are  deposited  as  soon  as  the  flow  and  ebb  tides 
become  equalised.  Not  only  are  the  fine  molecules  of  sand  and 
clay  precipitated,  but  the  sea-water  also  undergoes  a  chemical 
change  :  there  is  a  mixture  of  salts  of  chalk  and  magnesia  in 
the  deposit  at  the  bottom.  Furthermore,  innumerable  infusoria 
from  the  fresh  water,  which  die  upon  coming  into  contact 
with  salt  water,  and  myriads  of  marine  organisms,  which  fresh 
water  kills,  accumulate  in  compressed  strata  at  the  bottom  of 
the  beds  of  estuaries,  and  contribute  to  the  formation  of  such 
fertile  lands  that  the  agriculturist,  once  he  has  won  them  from 
the  sea,  can  find  no  end  to  their  productive  powers  :  they  yield 
harvest  upon  harvest  for  a  century  without  needing  any  reparation 
for  their  losses.  When  the  banks  of  mud  begin  to  emerge,  they 


THE  SAXON  83 

are  first  covered  with  a  growth  of  saltwort;  then,  as  they  get  less 
salt,  a  species  of  Carex  spreads  over  them ;  and  soon  after, 
creeping  clover  appears  on  the  soil :  then  is  the  time  for  man 
to  take  possession  of  these  new  shores ;  they  will  amply  repay 
his  labour. 

"Formerly,  when  the  inhabitants  of  the  geest  went  down 
to  take  possession  of  the  lowlands,  they  took  care  to  make  their 
homes  on  ancient  islands  above  the  marsh  floods,  or  to  make  for 
themselves  artificial  mounds  large  enough  to  provide  space  for 
their  houses  and  their  barns  and  for  a  home  for  their  cattle. 
Each  family,  which  might  at  the  time  of  the  floods  be  compared  to 
a  group  of  persons  who  had  suffered  shipwreck,  thus  dwelt  on  a 
solitary  mound  which  had  to  be  fortified  with  great  care  every 
year  to  secure  it  against  being  swept  away  by  the  sea.  A  great 
deal  of  debris  left  by  the  men  of  the  Stone  Age  has  been  found 
on  these  mounds."  1 

It  is  easy  to  imagine  the  seacoast  fishermen  spreading  over 
this  district  making  their  small  estates,  just  as  Tacitus  has 
described  them:  "They  live  in  isolated  and  scattered  dwellings, 
which  they  erect  wherever  a  spring  or  field  or  wood  takes  their 
fancy.  Colunt  discreti  ac  diversi,  ut  fans,  ut  campus,  ut  nemus 
placuit"  2 

It  was  an  easy  land  to  occupy ;  it  was  almost  without 
inhabitants. 

Moreover,  in  the  first  place,  it  was  sharply  divided  from  the 
Baltic  plain,  which  we  described  in  connection  with  the  German 
origin  of  the  Goths.3  In  fact,  the  lower  Elbe  is  diverted 
to  the  north  by  an  immense  sand-hill,  which  is  a  boundary 
of  the  Baltic  plain.  To  the  east  of  the  great  elbow  formed  by 
the  Elbe,  the  beautiful  lakes  of  the  Spree  end  in  the  so-called 
marshes  of  Anhalt.  To  the  south  the  range  of  the  Harz  Moun- 
tains, which  rise  above  the  marshes,  is  prolonged  by  a  series  of 
slopes  as  far  as  the  Rhine,  near  the  Sieg,  opposite  Bonn.  On 
the  west  the  Rhine  and  the  Yssel  serve  as  dikes ;  and  from 
the  Yssel  to  the  Ems  the  Boutanger  Moors  complete  its 
boundaries. 

Only  the  wreck  of  the  tribes  which  formed  part  of  the  first 
great  Germanic  invasion,  and  which  the  actual  conditions  of  the 

1  Reclus,  IS  Europe  centrde,  pp.  724-730. 

2  Gcrmania,  xvi.  3  See  above,  pp.  4,  5. 


84  THE  SAXON 

place  caused  to  degenerate,  found  their  way  to  and  settled  in 
this  country,  which  was,  as  we  have  seen,  naturally  poor,  and 
shut  in  on  all  sides. 

In  the  description  Tacitus  gives  of  the  Cherusci  and  the 
Fosi,  who  were  driven  into  the  eastern  corner  of  the  Saxon 
plain  towards  the  great  bend  in  the  Elbe,  we  see  their  type. 
"  The  Cherusci,"  he  says,  "  who  were  left  quite  undisturbed, 
became  enervated  by  maintaining  peace  for  a  long  time  at  all 
costs.  So  much  so  that  they  became  stigmatised  as  lazy  and 
stupid,  though  they  had  formerly  been  called  good  and  honest 
Cherusci.  Cherusci  nimiam  et  marcescentem  diu  pacem  illacessiti 
nutrierunt.  Ita  qui  olim  boni  aequiguc  Cherusci,  nunc  inertes 
ac  stulti  vocantur"  l 

We  can  understand  how  easy  it  was  for  our  Scandinavian 
emigrants,  who  had  sprung  from  a  great  race  of  peasants,  and 
who  were,  besides,  skilled  in  seacoast  fishing,  to  crush  such 
inhabitants.  An  old  northern  legend  represents  the  seacoast 
fishers  as  settling  discreetly  on  the  coast  of  the  Saxon  plain, 
and  continuing  their  fishing  there.  The  indigenous  folk  suffered 
them  to  stay,  and  made  no  difficulties,  merely  bidding  them 
not  to  take  possession  of  the  land.  The  relations  between 
them  were  so  friendly  that  on  a  feast  day  one  of  the  local  chiefs 
wished  to  give  the  foreigners  a  present.  They  asked  for  a 
handful  of  earth  as  their  sole  desire.  It  was  willingly  granted. 
But  the  next  day  the  handful  of  earth  was  scattered  about  far 
and  wide,  and  the  seacoast  fishers  claimed  the  right  to  defend 
with  their  arms  the  whole  area  which  it  had  covered. 

The  legend  is  significant. 

Side  by  side  with  the  portrait  of  the  Cherusci,  Tacitus  gives 
that  of  the  Chauci  or  Cauchi,  which  represents  the  particularist 
type  admirably.  These  Chauci  have  all  the  Saxon  character- 
istics. It  may  be  that  they  share  the  name  in  some  degree  : 
there  is  not  a  great  difference  between  Chauci  and  Saxi  or 
Saxones.  However,  that  is  of  little  importance,,  as  nothing 
is  more  variable  than  the  names  of  tribes.  Did  not  the  Romans 
give  the  name  of  Germans  to  tribes  that  had  never  called  them- 
selves by  that  name  ?  Do  not  the  French  give  the  name  of 
"  Alkmands  "  to  people  who  call  themselves  "  Deutschen  "  ? 
In  any  case,  history  passes  from  the  Chauci  to  the  Saxons 
1  Germania,  xxxvi. 


THE  SAXON  85 

without  notifying  the  change  from  the  one  to  the  other.  The 
Saxons  seem  to  have  received  their  name  from  the  stone  knives 
(in  old  Saxon,  sahs ;  in  Latin,  saxum)  which  they  used 
in  fighting.  We  have  mentioned  that  the  Norwegians  used 
that  weapon  later  than  the  other  peoples  of  the  west.1  But, 
to  pass  over  these  details,  however  significant  they  may  be, 
we  cannot  find  anything  more  striking,  more  extraordinary, 
more  enlightening  than  this  sudden  appearance  of  the  pure 
particularist  type  in  Tacitus'  Germany,  placed  as  it  is  as  a 
complete  and  hitherto  inexplicable  contrast  with  all  the  other 
types  of  Germans  there  described. 

"  So  far,"  says  Tacitus  (who,  in  his  description,  has  followed 
the  course  of  the  Rhine  as  far  as  Lake  Flevo,  the  Zuider  Zee 
of  to-day),  "  we  have  reconnoitred  the  west  of  Germany,  but 
here  the  country  makes  a  great  curve  to  the  north.  In  that 
very  place  dwells  the  tribe  of  the  Chauci,  whose  territory,  although 
it  starts  from  the  land  of  the  Frisii  (now  Friesland),  and  occu- 
pies part  of  the  coast,  also  extends  into  the  interior  towards 
the  territory  of  the  tribes  (of  the  Rhine)  which  I  have  just 
described,  and  penetrates  as  far  as  the  land  of  the  Chatti  (now 
Hesse).  The  Chauci  not  merely  have  dominion  over  this 
enormous  stretch  of  land,  but  fill  it.  They  are  the  finest  of  all 
the  German  tribes,  and  strive  more  than  the  rest  to  found  their 
greatness  upon  equity.  A  passionless,  firm,  and  quiet  people, 
they  live  a  solitary  life,  and  do  not  stir  up  wars  or  ruin  the 
country  by  plunder  and  theft.  They  give  this  excellent  proof 
of  their  worth  and  power,  that  they  never  heap  insults  upon 
their  chiefs  in  order  to  force  them  into  action.  And  yet  they 
are  always  ready  to  a  man  to  take  up  arms  or  even  form  an 
army,  if  the  case  demands  it.  They  have  plenty  of  men  and 
horses.  Their  fame  is  equally  great  in  times  of  peace."  2 

I  could  not  put  this  superb  sketch  of  the  great  painter  before 
the  reader  bit  by  bit,  but  in  order  to  comment  on  it  I  must 
take  it  sentence  by  sentence.  "  The  Chauci  not  only  have 
dominion  over  this  enormous  stretch  of  land,"  says  the  historian, 
who  is  speaking  of  a  country  he  has  actually  seen,  "  but  they 
fill  it " — tarn  immensum  terrarum  spatium  non  tenent  tan- 
turn  Ohauci,  sed  et  implent.  Is  not  this  exactly  the  impression 
which  modern  travellers  receive  OP  seeing  the  vast  country 
1  Brock,  Le  Royaume  d?  Norv&ge.  2  Oermania,  xxxv. 


86  THE  SAXON 

fields  of  England  and  America,  with  dwellings  sprinkled  on  all 
sides,  and  without  any  deserted  regions,  in  contrast  with  those 
empty  stretches  of  land  where  Tacitus  pictures  the  German 
communities  as  ceaselessly  shifting  their  farms  ? l 

"  They  are  the  finest  of  all  the  German  tribes,  and  strive 
more  than  the  rest  to  found  their  greatness  upon  equity." 
What  a  vigorous  expression  of  that  spirit  of  individual  dignity, 
of  that  feeling  for  the  rights  of  every  one,  which  is  the  character- 
istic of  all  the  particularist  races  ! 

"  A  passionless,  firm,  and  quiet  people,  they  live  a  solitary 
life,  and  do  not  stir  up  wars  nor  harass  the  country  by  plunder 
and  theft."  A  portrait  almost  identical  with  that  which 
Montesquieu  drew  of  the  English,  and  Ampere  of  the  Nor- 
wegians !  "  If  I  were  to  be  asked,"  says  Montesquieu,  "  what 
is  the  predilection  of  the  English,  I  should  find  it  very  hard  to 
say ;  not  war,  nor  birth,  nor  honours,  nor  success  in  love,  nor 
the  charms  of  ministerial  favour.  They  want  men  to  be  men. 
They  value  only  two  things — wealth  and  worth."  2  Beside  Mon- 
tesquieu's bold  outline  place  this  medallion  of  Ampere's  :  "  The 
first  people  I  saw  upon  landing  were  three  sailors,  whose  fair 
hair,  light  blue  eyes,  white  skin,  massive  frames,  slow,  stiff 
gestures,  and  imperturbable  coolness,  afforded  me  a  striking 
example  of  the  Scandinavian  type.  They  carried  my  luggage 
to  the  inn  and  fixed  their  charge  at  fifteen  shillings.  This 
demand  was  very  moderate,  as  a  shilling  is  worth  rather  less 
than  a  halfpenny,  but  to  me  it  seemed  exorbitant,  as  I  had  no 
clear  idea  of  the  value  of  money  in  that  country,  and  could 
only  think  of  English  shillings,  and  I  began  by  getting  angry. 
As  I  stormed  in  German,  they  didn't  the  least  understand  why 
I  was  in  a  rage,  heard  me  to  the  end,  and  then  quietly  reiterated 
their  demand.  At  last  a  servant  belonging  to  the  place,  who 
knew  a  little  German,  and,  for  lack  of  a  better,  served  as  inter- 
preter, put  an  end  to  the  misunderstanding.  They  did  not 
show  any  signs  of  triumph  at  being  in  the  right,  but  received 
what  they  had  demanded,  and  went  off  quietly,  as  if  there 
had  been  no  dispute  between  us."  3 

To  return  to  the  Chauci  of  Tacitus  :  "  They  give  this  excellent 
proof  of  their  worth  and  power,  that  they  never  heap  insults 

1  Germania,  xxvi.  2  Penstes  diverses. 

3  Esquisses  du  Nord,  pp.  6,  7. 


THE  SAXON  87 

upon  their  chiefs  in  order  to  force  them  to  action."  This  surely 
is  an  example  of  self-restraint  that  is  not  German,  and  is 
thoroughly  Anglo-Saxon.  It  is  evident  that  there  is  no  question 
of  clans  among  that  race. 

"  And  yet  they  are  always  ready  to  a  man  to  take  up  arms, 
and  even  to  form  an  army,  if  the  case  demands  it "  :  "  Si  res 
poscat " — "  if  the  affair  is  worth  the  trouble."  These  are 
matter-of-fact  people.  No  vainglory,  no  wars  to  pass  away 
the  time  as  with  the  Germans  ! 

"  They  have  plenty  of  men  and  horses.  Their  fame  is 
equally  great  in  times  of  peace."  And  what  do  they  do  in 
times  of  peace  with  so  many  horses  and  men,  so  as  to  give  scope 
to  their  energy,  check  their  passions,  and  prevent  themselves 
becoming  lazy  and  stupid,  like  the  Cherusci  ?  It  is  clear  that 
they  are  all  employed  in  agriculture.  If  they  merely  grazed 
and  rode  their  horses,  they  would  be  poor,  idle,  and  combative 
in  that  unfertile  steppe.  In  that  case  they  would  scour  the 
plain,  but  would  not  fill  it. 

It  must  be  confessed  that  in  this  sketch  the  Chauci  stand 
out  in  strange  relief  against  all  the  German  types  that  fill 
Tacitus'  pictures.' 

In  order  to  heighten  the  contrast,  I  will  content  myself  by 
quoting  from  the  author's  general  remarks  on  Germany  :  "  If 
the  city  in  which  they  are  born  languishes  in  the  ease  which 
is  the  accompaniment  of  a  long  peace,  the  greater  number  of 
young  men  of  noble  birth  go  and  offer  themselves  to  foreign 
tribes  who  are  at  war ;  for  inaction  is  insupportable  to  these 
people,  and  besides,  it  is  easier  for  them  to  win  renown  amid 
dangers,  and  a  chief  cannot  get  a  large  following  except  by 
displaying  his  strength  in  war.  A  war-horse,  a  Frankish  lance 
bloodstained  in  a  victorious  fight,  these  are  the  gifts  to  be 
looked  for  from  the  liberality  of  a  chief.  His  frequent  and 
sumptuous  repasts,  though  somewhat  coarsely  prepared,  take 
the  place  of  payment ;  war  and  plunder  furnish  the  means  of 
his  munificence.  It  would  not  be  easy  to  persuade  them  that 
it  would  be  better  to  plough  the  land  and  await  the  results  for 
a  year,  than  to  stir  up  enemies  and  get  wounds  ;  it  seems  to 
them  idle  and  lazy  to  heap  up  by  the  sweat  of  the  brow  what 
can  be  won  by  bloodshed.  They  pass  much  of  the  time,  when 
they  are  not  at  war,  in  hunting,  but  the  greater  part  in  sloth, 


88  THE  SAXON 

in  eating  to  excess,  and  in  sleeping.  The  most  valiant  and 
warlike  among  them  are  lazy,  and  leave  the  care  of  the  house, 
the  protection  of  the  household  gods  (periates),  and  the  culti- 
vation of  the  fields  to  the  women,  the  old  men,  and  the  most 
feeble  members  of  the  family,  and  themselves  stagnate  in  idle- 
ness. It  is  a  strange  contradiction  of  Nature  that  she  should 
make  the  very  men  who  so  much  like  idleness,  hate  quiet !  "  1 

There  is  no  need  to  dwell  on  the  opposition  between  these 
two  social  types. 

We  must  now  proceed  to  find*  out  what  transformation  the 
seacoast  fisherman  probably  underwent  when  he  exchanged 
the  fiords  of  Norway  for  the  Saxon  plain.  When  he  left  the 
sea  and  the  means  of  living  it  provided,  and  became  dependent 
on  the  resources  of  the  land,  did  he  not  see  the  society  which 
he  had  so  successfully  remodelled  revert  to  its  original  form  ? 
Was  not  his  system  of  life,  planned  as  it  was  to  respond  to 
the  demands  of  the  seacoast,  and  dependent  on  the  aid  of  the 
small  boat,  going  to  be  thrown  out  of  gear  and  "  fall  into  the 
water,"  as  the  French  would  appropriately  say  ? 

Certainly  not,  and  we  were  convinced  of  it  beforehand  ! 
We  knew  from  our  previous  observations  that  even  on  the  sea- 
coast,  and  while  he  still  had  his  little  boat,  the  seacoast  fisher- 
man instinctively  founded  the  home  of  his  choice,  the  source 
of  his  greatest  ability,  his  complete  and  absolute  independence, 
the  matured  power  of  the  particularist  family,  upon  the  estate. 

Therefore  he  had  no  crisis  to  face  when  he  quitted  his  boat 
and  plunged  into  the  interior  of  the  land ;  he  simply  fell  back 
upon  the  estate.  It  is  interesting  to  see  how  closely  connected 
the  facts  are  that  we  are  reviewing. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  seacoast  fisherman  is  going 
to  forsake  the  small  boat  for  the  estate,  now  that  he  is  face  to 
face  with  a  wide  stretch  of  land  and  a  shore  that  spreads  out  into 
the  interior,  for  that  is  practically  what  he  did  before,  though 
in  a  less  obvious  manner,  on  the  narrow  shores  of  Scandinavia 
with  his  little  wherry  close  at  hand. 

It  must  not  be  imagined  that  the  Saxon  plain  could  not 

have  provided  fishing  as  a  means  of  living.     It  is  bounded  by 

two  rivers  :  the  Elbe,  with  its  tributary  the  Saale,  and  the  Ems  ; 

a  third  passes  through  its  centre  from  one  end  to  the  other, 

1  Germania,  xiv.,  xv. 


THE  SAXON  89 

the  Weser.  Numberless  rivers  and  streams  have  their  sources 
there.  Salt  and  fresh  water  fish,  especially  salmon,  abound 
in  all  these  streams  which  flow  into  the  North  Sea,  forming 
roads,  as  it  were,  by  which  the  fish  come  to  feed  the  mainland. 

But  small  farming  is  the  chief  means  of  living,  and  in  many 
places  the  only  or  almost  the  only  one.  Of  all  the  methods  of 
land  cultivation,  it  alone  can  be  managed  by  ordinary  particu- 
larist  families,  because  of  the  small  number  of  hands  available, 
and  because  individual  households  strive  to  maintain  their 
independence  by  each  having  their  own  separate  estate.  More- 
over, the  soil  is  poor,  and  it  yields  better  results  under  the 
constant  care  of  the  small  farmer. 

The  following  very  interesting  habit,  which  the  race  developed 
not  long  after  it  became  anti-communal,  shows  to  what  an 
extent  the  small  estate,  the  separate  homestead  for  each 
household,  was  an  inherent  part  of  its  social  system.  As 
the  races  which  the  Saxons  met  in  the  Saxon  plain  were  inferior 
to  themselves  —  of  the  Cheruscian  type  —  they  soon  started 
the  practice  of  keeping  slaves.  Now  they  organised  the  life  of 
these  slaves  after  the  model  of  their  own.  They  made  them  live 
household  by  household  in  separate  dwellings,  demanding 
from  them  as  their  sole  duty  a  certain  amount  of  agricultural 
or  industrial  work ;  they  had  no  personal  services  to  perform ; 
they  had  to  produce  so  much  corn,  so  many  heads  of  cattle,  so 
much  woven  cloth,  so  many  finished  garments. 

Tacitus  contrasts  this  arrangement  with  the  Roman 
system,  which  was  to  group  numbers  of  slaves  together  in  a 
single  familia,  a  single  gang  in  a  single  cabin,  and  to  employ 
them,  according  to  the  system  of  the  division  of  labour,  for 
different  sendees,  which  all  had  to  do  with  one  and  the  same 
thing.  "  Servis  non  in  nostrum  morem  descripiis  per  familiam 
ministeriis,  utuntur.  Suam  quisque  sedem,  suos  penates  regit"  1 
Mark  this  well :  each  slave  has  self-government  in  his  home- 
stead, injj_his  own  home  :  "  suam  quisque  sedem,  suos  penates 
regit."  We  can  almost  feel  the  effort  that  master  of  language, 
Tacitus,  made  to  translate  those  words  into  Latin  from  the 
Saxon.  "  Frumenti  modum  dominus,  aut  pecoris,  aut  vestis, 
ut  colono,  injungit :  et  servus  haetenus  paret " — that  is  to 
say,  that  the  slave's  task  was  limited  to  that. 
1  Germania,  xxv. 


go  THE  SAXON 

He  was  a  serf  attached  to  the  soil ;  that  seems  to  be  very 
clear.  Tacitus  saw  him,  and  he  grasped  the  whole  point  in 
which  he  differed  from  the  rural  Roman  slave  :  "  non  in  nostrum 
morem  !  " 

So  much  for  the  system  of  organisation  applied  to  the 
industrial  arts  and  the  arts  for  obtaining  food  among  the  Saxons. 

Now  for  the  means  of  transport  which  they  employed. 

On  dry  land  there  was  no  further  need  of  small  boats. 
Travelling  had  to  be  done  on  foot  or  on  horseback.  The  horse 
figured  in  the  description  of  the  Chauci  we  quoted  above  : 
"  they  have  plenty  of  men  and  horses."  The  horse,  then,  was 
the  means  of  transport ;  it  was  used  far  more  for  agriculture 
than  for  war.  It  simply  did  the  duty  of  a  small  boat  in  the 
case  of  a  man  whom  a  small  estate  furnished  with  everything 
and  rendered  independent :  he  used  the  horse  to  help  him  out 
of  difficulties,  and  not  to  give  chase  to  other  people. 

But  Tacitus  points  out  a  peculiar  phenomenon.  The  men 
and  horses,  ordinarily  "  quiet  and  solitary  "  in  each  estate, 
held  themselves  all  ready  to  combine,  ''even  to  form  an  army, 
if  the  case  demanded  it."  That  was  one  of  the  causes  of  com- 
munication, and  those  were  the  means.  However,  almost  all 
communications  were  easily  made,  since,  "  on  that  enormous 
expanse  of  land,"  men  lived  so  near  together  that  they  filled  it. 

Here  we  touch  upon  the  question  of  the  organisation  of  public 
life.  But  we  are  obliged  to  recognise  that  such  cases  of  union 
have  rather  the  character  of  free  association  than  of  public  life. 

That  was  apparently  the  only  instance  of  co-operation 
between  one  estate  and  another,  and  it  had  a  very  peculiar 
character  :  it  was  limited  to  one  special  occasion.  Since  each 
individual  was  entirely  independent  and  isolated  in  his  own 
home,  he  only  co-operated  with  others  for  the  purpose  of  defence 
or  when  it  was  absolutely  necessary ;  beyond  that,  he  kept 
his  arms  in  readiness,  that  was  all :  "  prompta  omnibus  arma, 
et,  si  res  poscat,  exercitus." 

A  second  no  less  honourable  characteristic  was  revealed 
in  this  co-operation :  the  manner  in  which  each  individual  turned 
to  it  voluntarily  and  gave  his  help  deliberately. 

These  two  characteristics  of  co-operation — namely,  its  adop- 
tion for  a  special  purpose,  and  its  voluntary  nature — are  still 
found  in  the  Saxon  plain.  They  are  also  characteristic  of 


THE  SAXON  91 

English  communes.  The  communal  association,  whether 
public  or  private,  among  the  Saxons  and  English,  is  merely 
a  collection  of  individuals,  each  contributing  his  own  special, 
distinct,  and  separate  services,  organised  in  his  own  way,  accord- 
ing to  his  peculiar  needs,  and  with  a  special  staff.1 

What  a  contrast  to  the  patriarchal  commune,  the 
Russian  commune,  for  instance,  which  begins  by  swallowing 
up  everybody  compulsorily,  monopolising  every  kind  of  busi- 
ness that  may  arise  :  a  general  and  compulsory  partnership  ! 
The  French  commune  is  of  the  same  kind  :  a  commune  is  estab- 
lished a  priori  which  will  undertake,  without  distinction,  to 
look  after  all  the  communal  interests,  with  the  same  organisa- 
tion and  the  same  staff. 

It  is  easy  to  see  how  these  two  different  types  of  communes 
originated.  The  patriarchal  commune  proceeded  from  the 
communal  family,  which  provided  everything  for  everybody. 
The  particularist  commune  proceeded  from  the  estate,  which 
was  self -sufficient ;  which  was  isolated  and  independent ;  which 
was  not  brought  into  associations  except  for  special,  very  limited 
purposes,  so  that  its  independence  might  be  infringed  to  the 
least  possible  extent ;  which  remained  the  supreme  guarantee 
for  life,  and  which  was  the  condition,  sine  qud  non,  of  the  public 
constitution.  Without  independence  no  particularist  family 
can  exist. 

Further,  it  is  easy  to  understand  how  particularist  societies 
came  to  organise  public  authorities  and  public  life  in  turn, 
in  such  a  way  that  they  were  essentially  subordinate  to  private 
and  individual  independence.  Their  very  life  depended  on  that. 

In  the  above  system  of  public  associations  which  are 
formed  for  special  objects  and  kept  distinct,  it  is  also  easy  to 
distinguish  two  features  characteristic  of  public  life  among 
particularist  families ;  they  are  :  (1)  the  division  of  power,  a 
principle  but  ill  understood  in  France,  I  may  mention,  owing 
to  a  mistake  of  Montesquieu's ;  (2)  the  flexibility  of  public 
institutions — that  is  to  say,  the  quality  which  enables  them  to 
alter  their  form  of  government  easily,  without  revolutions  and 
violent  collisions,  and  without  destroying  or  renewing  their 
established  base.  But  our  business  here  is  merely  to  state  these 

1  See  Le  Play,  Lzs  Ouvriers  europtens,  vol.  iii.  p.  141,  etc. ;  Constitution  dc 
VAngleterre,  vol.  ii.  p.  9,  etc. 


92  THE  SAXON 

things  as  summarily  as  possible,  and  io  grasp  in  the  clearest 
way  their  starting-point,  their  original  cause  and  governing 
reason. 

After  the  question  of  public  life  comes  the  question  of  the 
expansion  of  the  race. 

When  travelling  could  only  be  done  on  foot  or  on  horseback, 
the  expansion  of  the  race  was  as  gradual  as  when  the  small  boat 
was  the  means  of  transport ;  this  would  account  for  the  very 
gradual  manner  in  which  the  Saxon,  plain  became  filled  to  the 
brim.  When  Tacitus  saw  it,  it  was  already  well  filled,  and  it  is 
certain  that  it  must  soon  have  overflowed.  And  when  it  did, 
the  particularist  family  passed  to  another  land  amid  new 
surroundings.  We  shall  see  how  it  underwent  a  new  trans- 
formation there,  and  what  the  transformation  was. 

Now  let  me  draw  the  reader's  attention  to  a  really  wonderful 
thing  :  namely,  the  way  in  which  the  Saxon  plain  completed  the 
marvellous  apparatus  which  produced  the  particularist  family. 
I  subjoin  a  summary  of  the  apparatus  ;  it  has  already  been 
described  in  part : 

A  funnel,  the  Baltic  plain,  to  receive  the  patriarchal  family 
in  the  beginning. 

At  the  end  of  the  funnel  a  small  tube,  the  narrow  south- 
eastern slope  of  Denmark,  to  introduce  the  patriarchal  family 
into  the  Scandinavian  islands. 

The  Scandinavian  islands  (including  Scania)  performing  the 
office  of  closed  vessels,  retorts,  to  imprison  the  patriarchal  family. 

Two  agents  to  bring  the  patriarchal  family  in  the  closed 
vessels  to  the  highest  pitch  of  tension  in  such  a  way  as  to  disengage 
the  loose  molecules,  under  the  pressure. 

These  two  agents  are  :  first — in  the  interior  of  the  retort — 
the  fertile  lands  ;  second — surrounding  the  retort — the  great  com- 
mercial caravan  leaders. 

Under  this  double  action,  the  extreme  tension  of  the  com- 
munity and  the  disengagement  of  loose  molecules,  individual 
emigrants  are  produced. 

The  short  neck  of  the  retort,  Kattegat,  introduces  them  into 
the  worm  of  the  still — namely,  the  fiords  of  Norway  and  Western 
Denmark. 

Into  this  worm  the  particularist  families  with  their  small 
estates  percolate  from  place  to  place  and  drop  by  drop. 


THE  SAXON  93 

The  distillation  of  single  households  from  the  patriarchal 
family  is  accomplished. 

But  above  the  worm  opens  the  Saxon  plain,  the  great  recep- 
tacle, where  the  particularist  families  congregate  on  leaving  the 
worm,  and  which  is  destined  to  bring  them  back  in  a  body  to  the 
interior  of  the  continent. 

Moreover,  the  receptacle  is  situated  at  the  very  place  from 
which  they  set  out  as  patriarchal  families — that  is  to  say,  at  the 
extremity  of  the  Baltic  plain. 

It  was  in  this  way  that,  by  passing  through  the  Scandinavian 
still,  the  real  Germanic  invasion  was  carried  on  and  taken  up 
again  at  the  same  point,  that  invasion  which  is  the  true  glory  of 
the  Germans,  which  has  distinguished  them  from  among  all  the 
nations  of  the  world,  because  it  was  responsible  for  introducing 
into  Europe  a  form  of  society  superior  to  that  of  the  Romans  : 
the  particularist  family,  in  the  place  of  the  patriarchal ;  the 
estate,  instead  of  communal  lands  ;  and  the  system  of  "  gentes 
and  clients" — in  short,  the  subordination  of  public  to  private  life. 

All  those  tribes  who  took  part  in  the  Germanic  invasion 
but  did  not  pass  through  the  Scandinavian  "  still "  from  end 
to  end,  and  who  spread  into  Europe  straight  from  the  Baltic 
plain,  as  we  saw,  merely  flowed  over  the  soil  of  the  Roman 
Empire  like  a  passing  torrent,  bringing  destruction  with  it  : 
they  founded  nothing  destined  to  last.  It  was  a  sort  of  Celtic 
invasion.  I  mentioned  the  Ostrogoths,  Visigoths,  Vandals, 
Burgundians,  Heruli,  Rugii,  Suevi,  and  Lombards.  The  last 
named,  however,  were  distinguished  by  the  peculiar  importance 
acquired  by  the  Lombard  Empire ;  they  were  the  most  akin 
to  the  Western  Scandinavians. 

None  of  these  German  tribes  were  of  any  lasting  political 
importance,  or  took  the  lead  in  Europe  from  century  to  century. 

One  after  the  other,  they  went  down  from  the  shores  of  the 
Baltic  straight  to  the  Danube  ;  there  they  were  turned  back 
by  the  current  of  the  Huns,  the  Alans,  and  the  Avars — that  is 
to  say,  the  tribes  coming  up  from  the  east — and  ascended  the 
upper  Danube  to  spread  out  over  the  south-west,  in  Italy, 
Gaul,  Spain,  Africa  even,  where  they  fell  one  upon  the  other 
and  perished,  after  having  terrorised  the  Roman  world. 

Those  German  tribes  are  nothing  more  than  a  vast  layer  of  a 
kind  of  Celtic  civilisation,  covering  the  ruins  of  the  Roman  Empire. 


94  THE  SAXON 

But  following  upon  those  Germans,  there  descended  upon 
Europe  in  their  turn  the  Germans  who  had  made  the  round 
by  Eastern  and  Western  Scandinavia,  and  had  re-entered  the 
continent  by  the  Saxon  plain.  It  was  they  who  organised 
Europe  :  their  influence  will  be  clearly  shown  at  every  point  as 
we  go  along. 

Thus  the  incomparable  importance  of  the  part  played  by  the 
Germans,  a  role  of  which  historians  have  an  instinctive  percep- 
tion, is  very  clearly  explained  by  the  fact  that  the  transforma- 
tion of  the  patriarchal  into  the  particularist  family  took  place 
in  their  race.  That  is  the  basis,  though  hitherto  people  have 
hardly  explained  it  to  themselves,  of  their  extraordinary  fame, 
a  fame,  moreover,  that  is  well  deserved.  Writers  on  the  origin 
of  the  Germans,  on  German  institutions,  all  make  mistakes, 
get  their  ideas  confused,  because  they  have  not  unravelled  this 
fundamental  point,  and  have  constantly  mixed  up  the  elements 
derived  from  the  first  Germans — namely,  those  who  came  from 
the  Baltic  plain  with  patriarchal  families — with  the  elements 
derived  from  the  Germans  of  the  Saxon  plain  with  particularist 
families. 

Only  the  latter  can  boast  the  merit  of  having  introduced  to 
the  world  a  social  organisation  superior  to  that  of  the  Romans. 

The  two  adversaries  worthy  to  remain  the  most  famous  in 
history,  the  Romans  and  the  second  group  of  Germans,  actually 
encountered  one  another  in  that  strange  war  in  Germany 
which  took  place  entirely  on  the  confines  of  the  Saxon  plain,  and 
was  waged  incessantly  on  the  same  spot  for  more  than  five 
centuries. 

The  duration  of  the  war  is  inexplicable,  as  is  the  tenacity 
with  which  it  clung  to  so  miserable  a  part  of  the  world  ;  and  the 
immense  results  which  the  final  triumph  of  the  Germans  brought 
are  inexplicable  without  the  explanation  we  have  just  given  of  it. 

The  part  the  Saxon  plain  played  was  to  reintroduce  into 
the  heart  of  the  continent  of  Europe  the  Germans  that  had 
been  transformed  in  Scandinavia  ;  it  was,  as  it  were,  the  alluvial 
point  whither  they  were  washed,  the  land  where  they  became 
focussed,  the  land  from  which  they  radiated.  There  the  sea- 
coast  fisherman  spurned  his  small  boat  with  his  foot,  and  turned 
to  make  his  way  into  the  interior  of  the  country.  We  shall  now 
see  what  road  he  took. 


CHAPTEK  VI 

THE  FRANK 
PART  I 

WE  were  struck  by  the  tranquillity  in  which,  according  to 
Tacitus'  evidence,  the  tribes  dwelled  "  who  filled  "  the 
Saxon  plain. 

It  is  worth  noting  that  the  Roman  expeditions  in  the  north 
of  Germany,  which  made  so  much  noise  in  the  world,  only 
followed  the  edge  of  that  plain,  and  did  not  penetrate  far  into 
it.  They  went  along  at  the  foot  of  the  mountains  which  bound 
it  on  the  south.  Their  route  is  distinctly  marked  by  the  three 
most  memorable  events  of  that  bloody  war.  It  was  at  the 
foot  of  Teutberg  (or  Teutoburger  Wald),  just  where  the  Ems 
has  its  source,  that  Varus  lost  his  legions.  At  the  place  where 
the  Weser  leaves  the  mountains  of  Hesse  to  widen  out  in  the 
plain,  in  the  fields  of  Idistavisus,  not  far  from  Minden,  Ger- 
manicus  won  his  name  by  the  defeat  of  Arminius.  It  was 
opposite  the  last  spurs  of  the  Harz  Mountains,  where  the  Elbe 
and  the  Saale  meet,  near  Magdeburg,  that  the  Roman  arms 
were  finally  checked.1  Though  they  went  all  along  that  line 
of  mountain  slopes  bordering  on  the  Saxon  plain,  the  Romans 
did  not  come  into  conflict  with  the  Saxons. 

What  kept  the  people  of  the  Saxon  plain  so  quiet  was  their 

independent  and  laborious  life  on  their  small  estates.     Their 

labour  had  become  heavier  since  they  had  buried  themselves 

in  the  heart  of  the  country,  where  they  were  far  from  seacoast 

fishing  :  they  were  obliged  to  lend  their  emigrants  assistance. 

The  latter,  in  fact,  had  nothing  but  an  estate  of  their  own  to 

live  upon  when  they  left  their  family.     Now  an  agricultural 

estate  is  not  like  a  fishery,  which  is  ready  from  one  day  to  the 

1  See  Atlas,  Vidal-Lablache,  pp.  $±,  95. 

95 


96  THE  FRANK 

next  to  provide  a  man  with  food.  Therefore  the  particularist 
family  had  to  develop  a  characteristic  which  was  unknown  to 
it  when  it  lived  on  the  seacoast.  In  Norway  seacoast  fishing 
had  shown  the  would-be  emigrants  the  means  for  acquiring 
the  liberty  they  desired ;  but  in  the  Saxon  plain  the  family 
was  obliged  to  think  of  a  means  of  getting  them  off  its  hands. 
To  keep  them  was  no  longer  possible  ;  the  great  framework 
of  the  patriarchal  family,  with  its  hosts  of  relations,  capable 
of  embodying  and  dominating  every  kind  of  nature,  was 
shattered  ;  there  was  nothing  for  it  but  to  accommodate  their 
ways  to  that  inevitable  independence. 

The  family,  then,  had  of  necessity  to  supply  the  place  of 
the  seacoast  fishing  by  assisting  temporarily  in  starting  the 
emigrants  in  life.  The  family  took  trouble  to  equip  them 
beforehand,  so  that  they  would  be  able  to  overcome  difficulties 
without  any  outside  help ;  and,  when  the  moment  came,  pro- 
vided them  with  the  things  that  were  first  needed  in  making  a 
new  home. 

How  did  they  manage  that  ?  It  is  not  difficult  to  conceive 
it.  The  family  went  about  from  place  to  place  to  obtain  a 
piece  of  unoccupied  land,  which  they  did  by  continually  extend- 
ing the  frontiers  of  the  country.  This  they  cleared,  or  rather, 
improved,  by  making  up  the  soil  in  the  way  we  have  described, 
by  bringing  sand  from  here  and  clay  from  there,  by  draining 
one  piece  and  bringing  water  to  another  ;  then  they  sowed  and 
reaped.  The  prospective  emigrant  would,  of  course,  give  up 
more  time  to  it  than  the  rest.  Little  by  little,  with  the  help  of  his 
family,  he  would  build  himself  a  sort  of  Robinson  Crusoe  house, 
where  he  could  go  and  live.  One  day,  when  he  had  had  enough 
of  his  family,  or  they  had  had  enough  of  him,  he  would  betake 
himself  to  it  for  good.  The  Saxon  plain  had  been  increased 
by  one  more  estate. 

That  is  the  way  in  which  the  family  intervened  to  make  up 
for  the  loss  of  seacoast  fishing. 

This  family  help  is  the  first  form  of  that  dowry  granted  to 
emigrants,  and  of  that  family  care  to  make  them  ready  for 
emigration,  that  we  meet  with  in  the  Saxon  and  Anglo-Saxon 
races  of  the  modern  type. 

Turning  to  a  recent  monograph,  the  Life  of  Father  Heckcr, 
I  will  take  at  hazard  one  out  of  thousands  or  tens  of  thousands 


THE  FRANK  97 

of  pieces  of  evidence  that  show  how  the  particularist  emigrants 
have  spread  and  perpetuated  this  custom  throughout  the  world. 
It  runs  as  follows  : 

"  Towards  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  a  German 
clockmaker — an  ancestor  of  P.  Hecker — Engel  Freund,  in 
company  with  his  wife  and  children,  left  his  native  town  of 
Elberfeld  (Saxon  plain)  to  seek  a  new  fatherland  in  America. 
His  wife,  Elizabeth  Schneider,  was  born  in  1764  at  Frankenburg 
(also  in  Saxon  country,  one  of  Charlemagne's  places  of  residence 
in  ancient  days,  near  Aix-la-Chapelle).  She  had  one  son  and 
several  daughters.  They  all  settled  in  New  York.  When  his 
daughters  got  married,  Engel  Freund,  then  at  the  height  of  his 
prosperity  in  trade,  gave  them  each  a  house  in  the  neighbourhood 
for  their  dowry,  in  order,  he  said,  to  perpetuate  in  that  way  the 
good  customs  of  the  mother  country  in  a  foreign  land."  1 

One  consequence  of  the  labour  imposed  upon  the  particu- 
larist family,  with  a  view  to  the  establishment  of  each  of  its 
emigrants,  is  worth  noting  :  it  absolutely  prevented  the  en- 
largement of  the  small  estate.  When  everyone  is  busy  world ng 
for  the  emigrant,  there  is  no  time  to  enlarge  the  family  estate. 
This  is  the  explanation  of  the  permanence  of  this  land  of  small 
estate.  The  race  expands  continuously,  without  a  pause,  and 
even  to  excess,  but  it  expands  by  means  of  small  estates,  not 
by  the  enlargement  of  the  original  estates.  The  small  estate 
does  not  augment,  but  it  gives  birth  to  a  quantity  of  others 
like  itself. 

It  is  a  very  curious  piece  of  mechanism,  and  its  effect  can 
be  seen  at  a  glance  in  all  the  particularist  countries  where  there 
is  a  patchwork  of  small  estates  that  are  permanent,  but  con- 
tinually multiplying.  The  same  movement  is  still  going  on  in 
the  far  west  of  America.  It  had  its  origin  in  the  Saxon  plain. 

Nay,  more,  emigration  still  goes  on  at  the  present  time 
from  the  Saxon  plain  to  the  far  west.  "  Young  Saxon  agri- 
culturists," says  Le  Play,  "  who  do  not  find  an  opportunity  of 
devoting  themselves  to  the  development  of  one  of  these  estates 
at  home,  usually  decide  to  emigrate  to  North  America  with  a  sum 
of  money  advanced  to  them  by  their  parents.  They  very  seldom 
decide  to  go  into  industrial  workshops  as  apprentices.  Re- 
pugnance towards  manufacturing  work  is  a  dominant  character- 

1  Vie  du  Pere  Hecker,  pp.  1,  2. 
7 


98  THE  FRANK 

istic  of  all  the  peasant  races  which  cultivate  the  vast  Saxon 
plain  between  the  Elbe  and  the  Khine.  .  .  .  Emigration  is 
established  on  a  regular  basis  everywhere  in  the  rural  districts, 
and  has  the  character  of  a  national  institution.  The  offshoots 
from  the  family  stock  who  cannot  set  up  new  establishments, 
or  find  work  in  a  country  where  the  land  is  fully  occupied, 
have  hit  upon  the  only  solution  which  could  enable  the  social 
organisation  of  the  country  to  continue  at  the  same  level. 
Instead  of  deferring  the  difficulty  by  using  insufficient  pallia- 
tives, and  instead  of  subdividing  the  land  into  small  plots, 
which  would  soon  have  reduced  the  families  to  a  uniform  level 
of  misery,  the  peasants  of  those  districts,  whether  tenants  or 
proprietors,  organised,  of  their  own  accord,  a  system  of  emigration 
which  regularly  drafts  off  the  superfluity  of  the  population  to 
North  America."  l 

We  now  understand  why  the  German  Chauci,  whom  Tacitus 
describes  as  nearly  filling  the  Saxon  plain,  were  so  busy  in  times 
of  peace  and  so  reluctant  to  engage  in  war. 

But  we  can  also  understand  that  the  first  condition  necessary 
to  enable  the  family  to  succeed,  was  that  the  unoccupied  land 
should  represent  the  largest  part  of  the  emigrant's  capital  at  the 
moment  of  his  independent  start  in  life.  The  free  land,  the 
virgin  soil,  was  the  emigrant's  main  stand-by  ;  the  help  given  by  his 
family  merely  supplemented  it.  We  saw  how  the  first  step  the 
family  took  towards  setting  up  the  emigrant  was  to  seek  an 
unoccupied  piece  of  land.  If  the  family  had  been  obliged  to  buy 
an  estate  for  each  of  its  sons,  it  would  certainly  not  have  been 
equal  to  it;  in  most  cases  it  could  not  have  provided  even  for  one 
of  its  sons. 

This  is  another  reason  why  the  races  with  particularist 
families  were  obliged  to  find  new  lands.  That  is  the  very 
simple  secret  of  the  constant  invasion  of  new  countries  by  the 
Saxons  and  Anglo-Saxons.  It  was  a  vital  necessity  with  them. 
It  was  founded  on  no  political  calculation,  no  economic  theory. 
It  was  a  family  matter  pure  and  simple,  indispensable  to  its 
existence,  and  executed  by  the  family  itself  as  a  matter  of  cours3. 

After  a  close  examination  of  the  facts,  we  must  allow  that  a 
particularist  family  with  a  small  estate  could  do  no  more  for  the 
establishment  of  its  emigrants  than  what  we  have  already  repre- 

1  Le  Play,  Ouvriers  europeens,  vol.  iii.  pp.  156,  192. 


THE  FRANK  99 

sented  it  doing  in  the  Saxon  plain,  and  that  kept  it  busy  enough. 
The  family  unceasingly  spent  its  time,  its  forethought,  its  sub- 
stance, its  capabilities,  upon  this  object.  This  kind  of  emigra- 
tion on  a  small  scale  was  essentially  an  emigration  of  individuals, 
one  by  one,  a  founding  of  small  estates,  one  by  one,  wherever  an 
empty  piece  of  land  could  be  found.  This  method  of  expansion 
has  remained  the  characteristic  of  all  the  particularist  races 
when  they  have  been  obliged  to  rely  upon  nothing  but  the 
resources  of  the  peasant's  family,  nothing  but  the  resources  of 
the  small  estate. 

One  realises  that  their  expansion  was  naturally  of  a  pacific 
kind,  since  it  was  accomplished  by  single  individuals  ! 

This  would  account  for  the  fact  that  for  more  than  a  century 
after  Tacitus,  the  population  of  the  German  plain,  in  spite  of 
the  extraordinary  qualities  which  the  historian  saw  them  to 
possess,  did  nothing  to  make  a  stir  in  the  world,  though  every- 
thing all  about  them  was  in  a  terrible  commotion.  It  is  a 
striking  fact  that  the  Komans  and  Germans,  in  their  final 
conflict,  respected  this  corner  of  the  earth  and  made  a  circuit 
round  the  Saxon  plain,  as  if  it  were  a  country  that  was  walled 
in,  or  some  high,  solitary  plateau.  Without  the  evidence  of 
Tacitus  we  might  almost  believe  that  it  was  a  desert,  impassable, 
or  still  submerged  beneath  the  waves  of  the  North  Sea.  It 
would  be  impossible  for  us  to  explain  things  otherwise. 

Butwhilst  the  peasants  of  the  Saxon  plain,  by  their  incessant, 
pacific  emigration  of  unit  by  unit,  "  insinuated  themselves  " 
(to  use  Tacitus'  expressive  phrase)  even  among  the  Chatti — 
that  is  to  say,  that  they  spread  as  far  as  the  winding  valleys  of 
the  mountain  range  of  Hesse  ;  whilst  they  pushed  the  Cherusci 
farther  and  farther  back  towards  the  marshes  of  the  Elbe, 
and  pressed  more  closely  the  petty  German  tribes  who  had 
already  been  driven  to  the  banks  of  the  Rhine — the  Bructeri, 
the  Teucteri,  the  Marsi,  and  the  Chamavi — something  had 
unexpectedly  happened  to  the  Old  Germans  of  the  Baltic  plain 
and  of  Eastern  Scandinavia,  who  had  continued  to  live  in  the 
patriarchal  style. 

At  this  point  we  again  come  into  contact  with  those  Odinid 
chiefs  whom  we  purposely  described  side  by  side  with  the 
Gothic  peasants  because  they  had  a  hand  in  directing  the 
destinies  of  the  particularist  family.  We  shall  now  consider 


ioo  THE  FRANK 

the  influence  which  that  group  of  leaders  of  men  with  their 
patriarchal  and  urban  traditions  had  upon  this  family.1 

We  have  already  mentioned  that  while  the  Gothic  emigrants 
went  away  to  the  west,  one  by  one,  to  seek  a  retired  spot  in  the 
fiords  of  Norway  where  they  might  be  independent,  the  rich 
Odinid  warriors,  on  the  contrary,  thought  only  of  reopening  the 
road  to  the  east,  and  looked  out  for  tribes  in  every  part  of  the 
Baltic  plain  which  they  might  stir  up  to  follow  them.  They 
were  soon  checked  in  their  advance  upon  Asia  by  the  Huns  and 
the  Alans,  but  they  despatched  the  Ostrogoths,  the  Visigoths, 
the  Gepidae,  the  Vandals,  the  Burgundians,  the  Suevi,  the  Rugii, 
the  Heruli,  in  succession  across  the  Danube  and  the  Rhine,  the 
Roman  frontier.  This  succeeded  so  well  that  before  long  there 
were  none  of  the  Old  Germans  left  in  the  whole  of  the  Baltic 
plain,  so  that  war  came  to  an  end  for  lack  of  combatants.  The 
empty  land,  however,  was  soon  refilled  by  new-comers,  but  they 
were  men  speaking  another  language,  with  another  form  of 
religion  and  another  social  organisation,  still  nomadic,  or  semi- 
nomadic,  and  under  the  rule  of  patriarchs.  But  the  Odinid 
warriors,  who  had  become  over-civilised,  and  had,  moreover, 
been  decimated  by  their  warlike  expeditions,  found  them  too 
weak  for  recruits  and  too  difficult  to  enlist.  These  foreigners 
were  the  Slavs  or  Wends. 

The  Odinids  then  turned  their  eyes  towards  the  Saxon  plain, 
which  they  had  at  first  neglected,  thinking  it  an  isolated  place 
cut  of?  from  everywhere,with  a  scattered,unorganised  population 
which  had  no  passion  for  war  and  adventure.  But  the  inhabit- 
ants of  that  country  began  to  overflow  and  to  press  upon  their 
neighbours  on  every  side.  Then  the  Odinids  discovered  that 
they  were  of  their  own  race,  had  the  same  language,  religion,  and 
traditions  as  themselves.  At  the  same  time  they  were  no 
longer  like  the  Old  Germans,  who  were  ready  to  enlist  and  would 
be  easily  stirred  up  to  go  to  war  or  to  shift  their  homes.  We  have 
seen  with  what  energy  the  Neo- Germans  of  Western  Scandinavia 
and  the  Saxon  plain  were  inclined  to  oppose  any  organisation 
of  superior  authority.  So  the  descendants  of  Odin  and  his 
companions  found  that  there  was  no  room  for  them  in  the  midst 
of  these  peasants  with  particularist  families  except  as  private 
men  ;  they  might  be  honoured  because  of  their  illustrious 
1  See  above,  Ch.  II.  p.  14  ff. 


THE  FRANK  101 

birth  and   their  recollections  of    Scandinavia,  but  that  was 
all. 

They  formed  the  Saxon  "  Nobility "  of  that  time,  and 
continued  as  such  till  the  conquest  of  Charlemagne.1  The 
"  bourgeois  "  life,  little  suited  as  it  was  to  the  temperament 
of  the  Odinids,  naturally  prevented  much  immigration  on 
the  part  of  the  warrior  chiefs.  Nevertheless,  they  brought  a 
new  element  into  the  peasant  life,  which  was  destined  to  perform 
a  really  useful  part. 

The  useful  part  played  by  the  Scandinavian  warrior  was 
that  of  extending  the  sphere  and  augmenting  the  results  of 
Saxon  emigration  in  a  singular  degree,  by  causing  emigration 
in  bands  to  take  the  place  of  emigration  of  solitary  individuals, 
and  by  making  emigration  to  distant  regions  take  the  place  of 
emigration  to  near  places. 

In  fact,  it  was  essential  to  the  nature  of  their  social  formation 
that  they  should,  in  direct  contrast  to  the  Saxon  peasants,  be 
engaged  in  acting  upon  others  rather  than  upon  themselves. 

They  had  been  brought  up  rather  to  take  the  offensive,  to 
fight  in  wars  of  adventure  and  conquest,  unlike  the  peasants, 
who  were  accustomed  only  to  protective  war,  to  local  and 
defensive  wars,  and  were,  as  Tacitus  describes  them,  peace-loving, 
slow  to  take  up  arms,  and  devoid  of  any  passion  for  fighting. 

For  organising  the  emigration  of  bands  destined  for  distant 
places,  the  Scandinavian  warrior  had  an  instrument  ready  to 
hand,  his  truste,  his  large  domestic  following.  He  was  no  man 
of  the  people  who  had  escaped  from  his  community  by  the  aid 
of  a  small  boat.  He  was  a  wealthy  descendant  of  a  patriarchal 
family  surrounded  by  his  devoti,  his  faithful  followers,  after 
the  fashion  of  the  Celts  and  of  the  Old  Germans.  And,  even 
when  he  had  to  flee  from  the  land  of  his  fathers  with  all  speed, 
after  some  unsuccessful  stroke,  he  had  a  large  vessel  upon  the 
shore  with  ten  banks  of  rowers,  which  carried  him  swiftly  to  the 
open  sea.  In  the  vessel  were  the  pick  of  the  devoti ;  the 
others  awaited  him  on  the  high  seas  or  went  thither  to  rejoin 
him.  This  is  the  classical  picture  which  the  Sagas  present  to  us. 

The  truste  formed    the  bodyguard,    the  staff    of    officers, 
the  administrative  body  which  was  indispensable  to  the  Scandi- 
navian warrior  for  the  organisation  of  his  band  of  emigrants. 
1  La  Science  Sociale,  vol.  ix.  pp.  377-380,  April  1890. 


102  THE  FRANK 

He  did  not  enlist  his  band  as  he  used  to  in  Old  Germany 
where  he  forced  whole  tribes,  with  women  and  children,  to  step 
out  after  him :  in  the  Saxon  plain  he  could  recruit  only  individual 
volunteers  from  among  the  young  emigrants  who  were  leaving 
home,  and  then  only  for  a  definite  purpose,  in  accordance  with 
the  system  of  voluntary  associations  for  special  objects. 

It  is  a  curious  fact  that  this  is  one  of  the  methods  of  recruiting 
used  nowadays  for  the  English  marine  service.  Young  men, 
on  the  lookout  for  an  opening,  enter  the  service  by  specifying 
the  work  they  would  like  to  do  :  "one  engages  himself  as  a  stoker, 
another  as  a  seaman,  another  as  an  artilleryman,  another  as 
steward. 

The  special  stipulation  the  young  Saxon  peasant  made  was 
that  he  should  not  be  led  to  war  to  accomplish  mighty  deeds, 
but  to  amass  booty,  which  would  take  the  place  of  the  family 
help,  which  would  otherwise  have  been  necessary  to  set  him 
up  on  an  estate  ;  and  further,  to  find  a  piece  of  land  somewhere 
that  was  unoccupied  or  that  the  Odinids  would  clear  for  him. 

It  is  easy  to  see  how  much  this  new  form  of  emigration  must 
have  lightened  the  family's  duties  and  helped  the  emigrant 
to  independence. 

It  therefore  became  very  popular  among  the  people  and 
extended  the  influence  of  the  particularist  family  in  the  world 
to  a  wonderful  degree. 

Private  means  of  transport  were  used  for  the  new  system 
of  emigration  :  it  was  accomplished  on  foot  or  on  horseback. 
But  most  commonly  the  emigrant  went  on  foot ;  for  he  had 
inherited  strong  limbs  from  his  family,  and  besides,  it  was 
hard  for  his  parents  to  give  up  to  him  one  of  the  horses  used 
for  the  cultivation  of  the  estate. 

The  warrior  exerted  the  same  influence  upon  the  means 
of  transport  as  the  caravan  leader  :  he  converted  the  private 
means  of  transport  into  a  public  means. 

We  shall  find  that  public  authority  was  first  constituted — 
and  we  know  that  hitherto  there  had  been  an  extraordinary 
absence  of  it  among  the  particularist  families — as  a  result 
of  this  new  organisation  of  means  of  transport. 

The  emigrant  band  organised  in  the  manner  we  described 
above,  constituted,  properly  speaking,  a  tribe  of  Franks.  There 
were  as  many  Frankish  tribes  as  there  were  bands  of  this 


THE  FRANK  103 

kind.  Frank  was  the  generic  name  of  all  these  emigrants,  a 
name  which  is  strong  evidence  of  their  feeling  of  independence  ; 
but  there  was  perfect  autonomy  in  each  band  :  there  were 
the  Franks  under  Clodion,  the  Franks  of  the  Sieg  or  theSicambri, 
the  Chamavian  Franks,  the  Salian  Franks,  etc. 

Besides,  subject  to  more  strict  definition,  the  following 
fact  may  be  called  a  law  of  society  :  that  the  great  organisers 
of  the  means  of  transport,  who  put  themselves  at  the  head  of 
the  emigrant  bands,  generally  constituted  the  first  governing 
staff  on  arrival  at  the  place  of  destination.  Now  that  we 
know  the  formation  of  the  Frankish  band  or  tribe,  let  us 
trace  its  progress,  and  see  to  what  extent  it  shows  the  influence 
of  its  first  constitution  throughout  its  history. 

The  course  was  well  mapped  out.  The  band  was  to  look 
for  booty  and  for  land  :  undoubtedly  the  best  were  to  be  got, 
not  in  the  east,  where  the  Slavs  were  spreading,  but  in  the 
west,  among  the  Romans. 

An  exact  counterpart  of  the  Saxon  plain,  whose  weakest 
frontier  is  formed  by  the  Rhine,  lies  on  the  other  side  of  the 
river  :  it  is  the  country  of  Flanders,  which  nowadays  includes 
the  north  of  the  Rhenish  Province,  Cis-Rhenian  Holland, 
Belgium,  French  Flanders,  and  Artois.  There  is  one  differ- 
ence, however  :  the  land  there  is,  on  the  whole,  richer  than 
it  is  in  the  Saxon  plain,  and  sometimes  very  much  more  so. 

The  Flemish  plain  lies  on  the  left  of  the  Rhine,  and  is 
formed  by  the  basins  of  the  Meuse  and  the  Escaut,  just 
as  the  Saxon  plain  is  formed  by  those  of  the  Ems  and  the 
Weser. 

The  two  plains  together  form  a  large  semicircle,  a  sort  of 
collar  round  the  delta  of  the  Rhine,  of  which  the  Zuider  Zee 
is  very  nearly  the  centre. 

But,  however  much  their  greed  and  daring  prompted  the 
Frankish  bands  to  throw  themselves  into  the  Flemish  plain, 
they  were  for  a  long  time  restrained  by  the  resistance  of  the 
Romans  ;  and,  as  they  could  not  turn  back  towards  the  Saxon 
plain  without  danger  of  being  very  badly  received  there  (which 
can  be  easily  understood),  they  gradually  congregated  on  the 
right  bank  of  the  Rhine  and  on  the  banks  of  its  tributaries, 
from  the  Yssel  to  the  Sieg,  which  flows  into  the  Rhine  opposite 
Bonn  at  the  southern  extremity  of  the  Saxon  plain.  The 


104  THE  FRANK 

Frankish  bands  received  their  different  appellations  from  the 
names  of  the  rivers  on  whose  banks  they  lived. 

But  space  there  became  restricted,  and  they  determined 
to  so  round  the  mountains  of  Hesse  in  order  to  find  an  outlet 

o 

farther  south,  in  the  lower  basin  of  the  Main.  In  this  way  a 
first  Frankish  land  was  formed  between  the  Saxon  plain  and 
the  Main,  and  was  called  Eastern  France. 

The  Franks  continued  to  congregate  and  expand  in  this 
way,  while  the  Roman  power  on  the  other  side  of  the  Rhine 
grew  weaker  and  weaker,  till  at  last  they  made  a  general  attack, 
though  each  band  worked  for  its  own  hand.  This  attack  is 
known  as  the  Frankish  invasion  of  the  beginning  of  the  fifth 
century.  They  crossed  the  Rhine,  this  time  successfully,  all 
the  way  along  from  the  Main  to  the  Yssel. 

They  settled  first  all  along  the  left  bank.  Once  there,  they 
were  not  slow  in  spreading  out  over  the  Flemish  plain,  which 
is,  I  have  said,  the  counterpart  of  the  Saxon  plain  on  the  left 
of  the  Rhine,  and  over  the  valley  of  the  Moselle,  which  is  also 
on  the  left  of  the  Rhine,  and  is  the  counterpart  of  the  valley 
of  the  Main.  This  was  Western  France. 

The  Franks  must,  of  course,  have  occupied,  or  at  any  rate 
penetrated  into  the  country  in  a  far  more  rapid  and  headlong 
way  than  the  Saxons  did  in  the  Saxon  plain,  for  their  method 
of  emigrating  in  bands  to  distant  places  under  the  direction 
of  a  restless  and  adventurous  truste,  was  necessarily  far  quicker 
than  that  of  the  Saxons,  who  emigrated  one  by  one  in  simple 
peasant  fashion,  and  only  went  short  distances. 

In  this  complex  series  of  facts,  which  are  linked  so  closely 
one  to  the  other,  we  see  the  working  of  the  natural  mechanism 
of  the  Frankish  band  as  if  through  a  magnifying  glass ;  from 
the  details  we  can  get  a  knowledge  of  the  genesis  of  the  Frankish 
race  from  its  formation,  and  its  departure  from  its  Saxon  farms 
under  the  leadership  of  the  Odinid  truste,  till  it  settled  in 
its  first  territory,  Eastern  France,  south  of  the  Saxon  plain, 
and  in  Western  France,  opposite  the  Saxon  plain,  beyond  the 
Rhine. 

All  this  is  the  direct  and  normal  result  of  the  constitution 
of  our  band  of  emigrants. 

Let  us  pause  now  and  watch  one  of  these  bands  settling 
in  the  land. 


THE  FRANK  105 

When  the  so-called  Roman  legions,  which  were  no  more 
than  an  aggregate  of  Old  Germans,  who  had  been  conquered 
and  subsequently  admitted  into  the  empire,  had  been  repulsed, 
the  band  of  Franks  made  the  representative  of  the  imperial 
power  come  to  terms.  An  agreement  was  made  that  the 
warrior  at  the  head  of  the  Frankish  band  should  be  recognised 
as  the  representative  of  the  emperor  in  the  place  of  the  man 
that  had  been  defeated.  The  new  governor  was  installed,  after 
the  Roman  fashion,  in  a  town  that  was  ceded  to  him,  together 
with  the  surrounding  country,  upon  which  he  was  allowed  to 
levy  taxes  for  his  private  profit.  He  had  with  him  his  truste, 
which  had  been  increased  on  the  way  by  those  who  had  the 
taste  and  ability  for  the  career  it  offered.  The  so-called  Roman 
legions  passed  under  his  command.  He  received  or  appro- 
priated certain  large  villas,  certain  forest  lands  which  belonged 
to  the  imperial  domain  or  chanced  to  be  abandoned.  The 
revenue  from  this  property  was  added  to  that  which  came 
from  the  taxes,  and  he  had,  besides,  the  income  from  the  pleasure 
grounds  and  the  hunting  lands. 

The  Frankish  chief,  then,  with  his  truste,  entered  quite 
naturally  into  the  situation  previously  occupied  by  the  Gallo- 
Roman  governor  and  his  following  ;  he  was  quite  in  his  element 
there,  except  that  it  was  not  natural  for  him  to  remain  long 
in  one  place  without  organising  some  new  warlike  expedition. 

As  far  as  the  Gallo-Roman  population  was  concerned,  the 
difference  between  him  and  his  predecessor  was  hardly  per- 
ceptible. The  former  governor  was  singularly  like  the  new, 
and  the  old  administration  like  the  new. 

But  what  became  of  the  ordinary  Frank,  the  agricultural 
emigrant  ? 

As  for  him,  he  settled  outside  the  town,  on  the  estate  of 
which  he  had  long  dreamed.  In  the  country,  which  had  been 
deserted  by  the  inhabitants  with  good  reason  during  the  war, 
it  was  easy  to  find  estates,  and  they  were  often  well  stocked 
with  everything.  There  was  no  need  to  have  recourse  to  the 
eviction  of  those  owners  who  were  still  alive,  for  they  lived  in 
the  neighbouring  town  in  accordance  with  the  Roman  custom. 
Plenty  of  land  was  unoccupied,  public  as  well  as  private,  quite 
enough  for  the  comparatively  small  number  of  Franks. 

As  soon  as  the  war  was  over,  there  was  no  difficulty  in  settling 


io6  THE  FRANK 

in  peacefully  and  speedily.  The  booty,  the  slaves  taken  in  war, 
the  slaves  and  coloni  still  living  on  deserted  properties,  were 
an  excellent  substitute  for  the  help  that  the  emigrant  used  to 
receive  from  his  family  upon  his  settlement. 

The  transformation  which  the  Franks  brought  about  in  the 
Gallo-Roman  farms  and  villas  which  they  had  selected  for 
their  homes  and  made  into  secure  and  self-sufficient  homesteads, 
was  simple  enough.  They  found  agricultural  slaves  in  an 
organised  band  on  the  spot,  as  well  as  coloni.  The  former 
they  installed  in  separate  cabins  scattered  about  over  the  land, 
giving  into  their  hands  the  management  of  their  own  families, 
and  imposing  upon  them  the  obligation  of  working  a  portion 
of  the  estate  for  them  :  it  was,  in  fact,  a  reproduction  of  the 
Saxon  or  Chaucian  organisation  described  by  Tacitus.  The 
latter,  however,  the  colonists,  were  already  settled  in  a  similar 
way,  but  were  free — free,  at  least,  in  name,  for  Roman  law  did 
not  allow  them  to  leave  the  estate  where  they  were,  and  did 
not  permit  the  proprietor  to  send  them  away.  The  Franks, 
who  had  a  different  idea  of  liberty,  were  probably  not  slow  to 
confound  them  altogether  with  the  slaves  in  their  cabins, 
whom  they  looked  upon  as  forming  an  integral  and  immutable 
part  of  their  estates. 

Thus  the  agricultural  slave  passed  from  the  Roman  to  the 
Saxon  system  of  organisation.  The  Romans,  too,  had  actually 
settled  a  few  slaves  here  and  there  like  coloni,  but  without 
their  liberty ;  but  what  the  Saxons  did  indiscriminately  for  all 
their  servants,  the  Romans  only  did  very  exceptionally  for 
certain  favourite  and  privileged  servants.  And  the  colonus, 
little  by  little,  passed  from  his  nominally  free  position  to  the 
rank  and  title  of  slave,  or  rather  of  serf,  as  he  gradually  came  to 
see  that  the  latter,  under  the  Saxon  regime,  had  an  establish- 
ment of  his  own  no  less  than  he,  and  also  derived  some  advantage 
from  the  fact  that  the  master  took  a  direct  interest  in  him 
and  relieved  him  of  responsibility. 

Thus  it  naturally  came  about,  in  a  simple  and  easy  manner, 
that  the  system  of  serfdom — that  is,  Saxon  and  Frankish 
slavery — was  established. 

But  the  question  of  the  relations  between  the  warrior  chief 
and  the  ordinary  Franks  was  the  most  delicate  point  in  the 
settlement  of  the  Frankish  band. 


THE  FRANK  107 

Their  relations  could  not  be  absolutely  broken.  It  was 
indispensable  to  remain  united  from  the  military  point  of  view. 
The  new-comer  was  not  in  an  empty  country,  as  in  the  Saxon 
plain,  but  in  an  occupied  land  :  it  was  necessary  for  him  to 
guard  his  own  position  in  the  midst  of  Gallo-Romans.  He  was 
not  in  a  secluded,  isolated  country,  as  in  the  Saxon  plain,  but 
in  an  open  country,  where  fresh  bands  of  Franks  were  continually 
arriving,  who  constituted  separate  tribes  and  thought  it  no 
harm  to  fall  upon  their  kindred  bands.  The  Romans  also 
made  some  attempts  at  reconquest.  Lastly,  detached  parties 
of  Old  Germans  tried  to  force  their  way  about  everywhere. 
So  the  Franks,  who  were  a  practical  people,  made  no  difficulty 
about  remaining  united  to  their  chief,  from  the  military  point 
of  view. 

When  the  chief,  whose  duty  it  was  to  be  on  the  watch, 
thought  it  was  necessary  to  take  up  arms,  he  summoned  the 
Franks  together,  and  they  came  to  an  arrangement  among 
themselves  that  they  would  contribute  one  man  at  least  for  a 
given  area  of  land  ;  the  rest  offered  their  services  if  they  wished. 
The  young  men  took  part  in  the  expedition  in  the  quality  of 
emigrants.  It  was  the  Champ  de  Mars,  but  it  was  apparently 
only  convoked  occasionally. 

The  Franks  who  were  present  agreed  to  or  rejected  the 
expedition  that  was  proposed  to  them.  If  it  was  accepted, 
the  most  perfect  discipline  was  maintained  under  the  command 
of  the  warrior  chief. 

All  this  went  smoothly ;  but  in  other  matters  it  was  quite 
another  story. 

The  warrior  chief  saw  the  Franks  distributed  here  and  there 
on  estates  in  the  midst  of  the  lands  of  his  Gallo-Roman  subjects, 
and  was  very  much  inclined  to  levy  the  Roman  land  tax  and 
the  other  fiscal  dues,  for  his  own  profit,  on  all  properties  indis- 
criminately, whether  they  were  in  the  hands  of  a  Gallo-Roman 
or  a  Frank.  He  tried  to  treat  the  Franks  in  every  respect  as 
plain  Roman  citizens  ;  but  the  Frank  recognised  only  one  thing  : 
his  absolute  personal  independence  and  the  absolute  independ- 
ence of  his  estate,  his  own  kingdom. 

So  it  was  not  long  before  a  struggle  began,  and  it  was  kept 
up  incessantly. 

I  will  describe  a  few  incidents  which  illustrate  it : 


io8  THE  FRANK 

Childeric,  chief  of  the  Salian  Franks,  who  was  the  natural 
son  of  Merovig — and  we  are  here  touching  upon  the  very  first 
beginning — had  settled  on  the  territory  of  Tournay.  He  dis- 
pleased his  Franks  by  his  behaviour  in  some  matter  unconnected 
with  warfare.  They  expelled  him,  and  he  betook  himself  to 
Thuringia,  where  he  tried,  no  doubt,  to  collect  a  new  band  of 
Saxon  emigrants  about  him.  As  the  Franks  of  Tournay  found 
it  necessary  to  have  another  warrior  chief,  they  simply  chose 
the  nearest  Roman  general  for  the  post,  a  lieutenant  of  Aetius, 
Egidius,  who  had  the  command  of  the  north  of  Gaul,  and  had 
gradually  made  himself  independent  in  the  country  between 
the  Somme  and  the  Loire. 

It  is  fairly  clear  from  this  that  the  Franks  were  very  little 
inclined  to  tolerate  a  sovereign,  and  to  pledge  their  attachment 
to  any  one  whatsoever,  except  for  the  purpose  of  having  a 
military  commander  in  case  of  need. 

But  the  end  of  the  story  bears  most  upon  our  subject.  One 
of  the  trusle,  who  had  remained  faithful  to  Childeric,  had 
continued  to  live  at  Tournay,  "  in  order  to  watch  over  the 
interests  of  his  chief."  His  name  was  Viomad.  He  was  clever 
enough  to  persuade  Egidius  to  extort  some  taxes  from  the  Franks. 
The  result  was  inevitable  :  the  Franks  immediately  deposed 
their  chief,  and  Childeric,  who  had  been  kept  informed  of 
events  by  his  faithful  follower,  was  able  to  return  among  them, 
upon  making  a  promise  that  he  would  be  more  prudent  than 
Egidius  had  been  in  the  matter  of  taxation. 

But  the  Frankish  kings  seem  to  have  been  fated  to  desert 
the  policy  of  prudence  from  time  to  time.  The  Franks,  on 
their  side,  never  forgot  to  remind  them  of  it.  The  following 
examples  afford  an  illustration  : 

On  Theodobert's  death,  the  Franks  took  the  opportunity 
of  showing  their  hatred  for  Parthenius,  his  great  vassal,  because 
he  had  levied  taxes  upon  them  in  the  name  of  the  aforesaid  king. 
Parthenius,  anticipating  their  design,  fled  to  Treves  and  hid 
himself  in  a  chest  in  the  church,  whilst  the  Frankish  bishops 
tried  to  quell  the  rising.  But  they  could  effect  nothing.  The 
people  found  their  way  into  the  church,  discovered  Parthenius, 
and  stoned  him  to  death.  It  was  a  warning  to  the  new  king 
and  his  great  vassals. 

Later  on,  "  the  great  vassal,  Audon,  levied  public  taxes 


THE  FRANK  109 

upon  a  large  number  of  Franks,  who  had  been  exempt  from  them 
in  the  time  of  the  old  king  Childebert.  After  the  king's  death 
the  Franks  despoiled  him  of  everything  except  what  he  could 
carry  on  his  person.  They  burned  his  house  down,  and  would 
even  have  taken  his  life  had  he  not  taken  refuge  in  the 
church."  * 

M.  Fustel  de  Coulanges,  an  historian  who  is  an  admirer 
of  Roman  as  against  Frankish  institutions,  to  whom  the  above 
stories  evidently  do  not  convey  much  meaning,  since  he  prac- 
tically reduces  the  Frank  to  the  condition  of  an  ordinary  tax- 
payer, like  the  Gallo-Roman,  thinks  better  of  it,  though  too 
late,  and,  after  due  reflection,  adds  this  innocent  note  at  the 
end  of  his  chapter  :  "  Though  there  is  no  evidence  to  show  that 
the  Franks  were  exempt  from  taxes  (!),  it  is  probable,  at  any 
rate,  that  they  only  paid  a  few."  Oh  yes,  very  few  !  And 
that  is  more  than  probable.  The  savant's  instinct  corrected 
his  prejudices.2 

It  is  as  true  that  the  warrior  chief  tried  to  impose  taxes  on 
his  Franks  as  well  as  on  the  Gallo-Romans,  as  it  is  that  the 
Franks  would  not  hear  of  such  a  thing.  That  is  the  simple  and 
obvious  explanation  of  the  facts  we  have  just  stated,  and  this 
explanation  springs  from  the  knowledge  of  the  social  system 
under  which  the  Frankish  bands  were  formed.  A  little  Social 
Science  does  history  a  great  deal  of  good,  and  at  any  rate  pre- 
vents the  less  probable  of  two  hypotheses  from  being  chosen. 

The  Frank,  then,  defended  the  independence  of  his  estate, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  land  tax,  against  his  military  chief, 
who  was  installed  in  the  place  of  the  Roman  governor.  That  is 
our  first  point. 

The  second  is  this  :  the  Frank  objected  to  royal  agents, 
appointed  by  his  Romanised  chief,  coming  into  his  estate  and 
exercising  any  jurisdiction  there  ;  he  defended  the  independence 
of  his  estate  in  questions  regarding  the  maintenance  of  law  and 
order. 

In  this  point,  just  as  before,  the  men  belonging  to  the  truste 
tried  to  advance  the  king's  authority,  and  the  Franks  resisted 
unperturbed .  The  king  yielded,  and  ordered  his  agents  to 

1  Gregoire  de  Tours,  iii.  36,  vii.  15. 

2  Fustel  de  Coulanges,  Institutions  politiques  de  Vancienne  France,  part  i. 
p.  446. 


no  THE  FRANK 

withdraw.  The  landowners  took  care  to  provide  themselves 
with  a  royal  warrant  recognising  their  right  to  shut  the  gates 
of  their  property  against  the  agents,  and  they  rid  themselves 
of  any  agents  that  appeared  by  showing  their  warrants  :  "  There 
are  innumerable  royal  warrants  of  this  sort.  The  specimens 
that  have  been  preserved  by  churches,  and  have  come  down  to 
us,  reach  a  comparatively  high  figure.  The  substance  is  the 
same  in  all  cases,  the  form  nearly  so.  The  letter  was  delivered 
by  the  king  into  the  hands  of  the  landowner,  but  was  addressed 
to  the  counts  and  royal  functionaries.  If  the  count  or  his 
agent  made  his  appearance  at  an  estate  to  judge  a  case,  the  land- 
owner handed  him  the  warrant,  and  the  count  read  as  follows  : 
'  It  is  our  will  that  neither  you  nor  your  agents  ever  enter  the 
lands  of  this  bishop,  of  this  abbot,  or  of  this  layman,  to  judge 
lawsuits,  or  receive  fines,  or  to  seize  or  arrest  men  whether 
bond  or  free.'  The  series  of  royal  warrants  continued  under 
the  Merovingians  and  the  Carlovingians  and  even  later.  These 
'  immunity  grants '  are  not  the  origin  of  the  justice  rendered 
within  the  estate  ;  they  are  merely  the  consequence  of  it"  1 

"  The  edict  of  614,  of  Clotaire  n.,  declares  that :  '  If  men 
belonging  to  a  church  or  a  landowner  are  accused  of  crime,  the 
agent  of  the  church  or  the  landowner  will  be  required  by  royal 
functionaries  to  deliver  them  up  to  the  court  of  justice,  outside 
the  estate,  and  will  even  be  constrained  thereto  by  force  unless 
he  has  already  judged,  punished,  and  extorted  a  fine  for  the 
crime.'  "  2 

The  owner,  then,  acted  as  judge,  had  his  own  agent  for 
judging  cases  on  his  own  land  and  for  punishing  both  bond  and 
free  men  who  lived  upon  it.  And  if  he  did  not  exercise  this 
right  which  he  had  assumed,  the  king's  judges  claimed  the 
criminal  for  trial,  but  outside  the  estate. 

"  The  landowner,  then,  evidently  became  a  sort  of  civil 
authority  within  the  limits  of  his  estate."  (M.  Fustel  de  Coul- 
anges  would  have  done  better  to  say  :  intended  to  remain  a  civil 
authority.)  "  The  men  on  the  estate  called  him  Dominus,  a 
word  which  means  both  proprietor  and  master.  They  also 
called  him  Senior,  a  somewhat  vague  term  in  Merovingian 
language  implying  superiority  and  authority.  In  documents 

1  Fustel  de  Coulanges,  L'Alleu  ct  le  domaine  rural,  p.  455. 

2  Ibid.  p.  456. 


THE  FRANK  in 

we  find  it  applied  to  owners  of  large  estates  even  when  they  are 
plain  private  men  or  ecclesiastics.  The  master  of  the  land  was 
at  the  same  time  a  lord  over  men.  The  office  of  Senior  (sdniorat) 
was  not  an  institution  that  had  been  created  by  force  :  later 
on  there  was  a  military  and  feudal  office  of  Senior,  but  at  first 
the  office  of  Senior  simply  belonged  to  the  landowners."  1  For  this 
once,  the  matter  cannot  be  better  stated. 

But  it  is  not  everything  to  state  facts  well :  it  is  necessary 
to  understand  and  explain  them.  And  this  is  where  M.  Fustel  de 
Coulanges  fails. 

We,  on  our  part,  have  rigorously  followed  the  sequence 
of  facts,  according  to  the  method  prescribed  by  Social  Science, 
from  the  beginning  of  the  formation  of  the  particularist  family, 
and  we  perceive  that  we  are  face  to  face  with  two  powers  :  the 
owner  of  the  estate  and  the  warrior  chief. 

These  two  absolutely  independent  and  naturally  hostile 
powers  were  found  united  in  the  Prankish  band — that  is  to  say, 
in  a  temporary  organisation  of  public  means  of  transport  among 
Saxon  emigrants. 

On  arrival  at  the  place  of  destination,  the  union  was 
maintained  for  the  purpose  of  military  defence,  which  was 
indispensable. 

On  other  points,  unity  was  no  longer  possible.  The  moment 
the  Frank  set  foot  on  his  estate,  the  chief  had  to  retire  except 
in  his  military  capacity. 

But  the  chief  found  the  means  to  set  up  an  establishment 
of  his  own,  and  did  so  in  his  own  way,  which  was  different  from 
that  of  the  Frank.  He  did  not  install  himself  so  much  as  a 
landowner,  as  a  public  officer,  with  political  and  administrative 
functions,  thanks  to  the  Gallo -Romans  and  to  the  Roman  adminis- 
tration which  he  found  established  on  the  spot. 

The  chief  had  no  difficulty  in  exercising  this  political  and 
administrative  power  over  the  Gallo -Roman,  but  it  was  a 
different  matter  with  the  Frank. 

There  arose  the  struggle.  The  two  elements  of  the  Frankish 
band,  which  worked  so  well  together  when  it  was  a  question  of 
means  of  transport,  could  not  get  on  together  in  ordinary  life  : 
the  patriarchal  leader  warred  with  the  particularist  family. 

In  the  next  chapter  we  shall  see  the  issue  of  the  struggle. 

1  Fustel  de  Coulanges,  U Alien  et  le  domaine  rural,  p.  458. 


CHAPTER  VTI 

THE  FRANK 
PART  II 

WE  have,  as  it  were,  been  present  at  the  formation,  the 
march,  and  the  installation  of  the  free  bands,  called 
"  Frankish  tribes,"  which  emigrated  from  the  Saxon  plain. 
We  know  that  they  brought  with  them  to  the  territory  of  the 
empire  quite  a  different  element  from  that  which  had  been 
brought  there  so  far  by  the  tribes  from  beyond  the  Rhine  : 
they  brought  the  particularist  form  of  society. 

Historians  have  not  failed  to  notice  that  the  Frankish 
invasion  differed  essentially  from  the  other  Germanic  invasions. 
They  have  grasped  the  difference  at  three  points,  which  present, 
as  it  were,  its  exterior  aspects.  They  state  that : 

1.  Entire  tribes  took  part  in  the  Germanic  invasions  ;  the 
people  rose  in  a  body  in  their  full  numbers,  and  marched  as  if 
they  formed  a  single  band,  with  their  women  and  children 
and  all  their  portable  goods.  The  Vandals,  the  Suevi,  the 
Burgundians,  the  Visigoths,  who  invaded  Gaul  in  succession, 
and  all  those  who  spread  over  the  rest  of  the  empire,  came  in 
this  manner. 

The  Frankish  invasions  alone  were  carried  out  by  small 
isolated  bands,  which  were  quite  independent  of  each  other, 
had  but  little  equipment,  and  were  composed  almost  exclusively 
of  men,  and  of  young  men. 

While  the  Burgundians,  for  example,  entered  Gaul  in  one 
body,  counting  about  sixty  thousand  souls,  the  finest  band  of 
Franks  under  Clovis  counted  hardly  six  thousand.  Besides 
that  band  there  were  the  Franks  under  Sigebert,  those  under 
Ragnachaire,  those  under  Cararic,  those  under  Renomez,  and 
others,  of  course.  It  was  not  the  wholesale  general  migration 


THE  FRANK:  113 

of  a  people  ;  the  band  consisted  of  convoys  of  emigrants  who 
had  left  their  relations  and  had  entered  into  an  agreement 
with  different  transport  contractors,  with  different  leaders  of 
expeditions. 

2.  The  Germanic  invasions,  which  set  out  from  the  Baltic 
plain,  emptied  that  region  completely,  but  it  was  soon  refilled 
by  tribes  of  Slavs  coming  from  the  east. 

The  Frankish  invasion,  which  set  out  from  the  Saxon  plain, 
did  not  empty  that  region,  but,  on  the  contrary,  the  Saxons 
there  continued  to  spread  from  place  to  place,  after  their  peculiar 
manner,  and  it  was  not  long  before  they  encroached  on  the 
lands  of  their  emigrants  the  Franks.  Thence  arose  the  famous 
wars  between  the  Franks  and  the  Saxons,  which  lasted  till 
Charlemagne  conquered  the  Saxon  plain. 

3.  The  Germanic  invasions  made  only  ephemeral  settlements. 
The  kingdoms  of  the  Ostrogoths,  the  Visigoths,  the  Gepides, 
the  Vandals,  the  Burgundians,  the  Suevi,  the  Rugii,  the  Heruli, 
the  Lombards,  all  rapidly  disappeared. 

The  Frankish  invaders  gradually  absorbed  all  their  settle- 
ments, first  of  all  in  Gaul  and  in  Germany,  afterwards  in  the 
south  and  east,  through  conquest  or  through  their  influence ; 
and  in  proportion  as  they  absorbed  them,  more  in  some  places 
and  less  in  others,  they  set  up  an  absolutely  new  system  of 
government,  feudalism,  which  spread  over  all  Europe,  and 
lasted  for  centuries.  This  will  become  clear  as  we  go  on. 

But,  though  historians  have  remarked  these  very  considerable 
and  obvious  differences  between  the  Germanic  and  the  Frankish 
invasions,  they  have  not  perceived  the  causes  of  them.  They 
have  not  even  searched  for  them.  They  have  taken  the  fact 
for  what  it  is  worth. 

We,  however,  know  the  cause  which  lies  at  the  bottom  of 
the  phenomenon.  We  know  that  of  all  the  Germanic  invaders 
the  Franks  alone  belonged  to  the  particularist  form  of  society  ; 
and  we  know  that  this  form  of  society  not  only  explains  the 
three  distinctive  features  we  have  just  mentioned,  but  makes 
their  presence  inevitable.  No  sooner  were  they  stated  than 
they  appeared  to  us  to  be  the  obvious  and  necessary  consequence 
of  our  previous  observations. 

After  having  remarked  these  peculiar  characteristics, 
historians  have,  none  the  less,  classed  the  Frankish  invasions 
8 


ii4  THE  FRANK 

among  the  Germanic  invasions.  Our  investigations  put  an 
end  to  all  such  confusion.  The  Frankish  invaders,  on  the  one 
hand,  who  came  from  the  Saxon  plain,  bringing  with  them 
the  particularist  family,  must  be  clearly  distinguished  from  the 
Germanic  invaders,  properly  so  called,  who  came  from  the 
Baltic  plain,  and  brought  with  them  merely  the  patriarchal 
family,  more  or  less  disorganised  by  long  military  expedi- 
tions. 

Among  the  invasions  commonly  called  Germanic,  but 
wrongly  so  called,  the  only  one  which  brought  about  a  complete 
change  in  the  constitution  of  Continental  Europe — we  shall 
speak  of  the  Saxon  expeditions  over  seas  later — was  the 
Frankish  invasion,  and  no  other.  We,  French,  should  have 
more  satisfaction  in  recording  that  fact  if  we  had  remained 
more  faithful  to  our  original  character.  We  shall  see  in  the 
course  of  our  history  how  we  departed  from  it. 

We  must  complete  these  preliminaries  by  a  further  remark. 
The  new  territory  over  which  the  Frankish  invaders  spread 
with  their  particularist  families  was  the  Rhenish  basin,  includ- 
ing the  wide  plains  of  the  Meuse  and  the  Escaut,  which  make 
part  of  it.  Thus  the  New  Germany  is  in  the  Rhenish  basin, 
and  not,  like  Old  Germany,  in  the  Baltic  plain.  It  is  a  point 
worth  noting  that  the  New  Germany  had  at  first  no  other 
name  than  that  of  the  country  of  the  Franks  :  Eastern  France 
on  the  right  bank  of  the  Rhine,  in  the  valleys  of  the  Main  and 
the  more  northern  tributaries ;  Western  France  on  the  left 
bank  of  the  Rhine,  in  the  valleys  of  the  Moselle,  the  Meuse,  and 
the  Escaut.  That  made  up  the  whole  of  France  ;  it  had  no 
territory  elsewhere.  On  the  side  towards  Gaul,  to  which  its 
land  hardly  reached,  the  south-western  boundaries  were  formed 
by  the  Somme,  and  by  the  low  hills  which  rise  above  the  basins 
of  the  Seine  and  the  Rhone.  But  the  name  of  France,  on  the 
contrary,  as  we  shall  see,  soon  disappeared  from  the  Rhenish 
basin,  and  was  transferred  and  restricted  to  the  land  below 
the  Somme  and  the  northern  hills  of  the  basins  of  the  Seine 
and  the  Rhone  ;  and,  for  centuries,  from  the  last  of  the  Carlovin- 
gians  to  Louis  xiv.,  the  name  scarcely  extended  any  farther. 
The  basin  of  the  Rhine  and  all  the  districts  of  ancient  Germany, 
which  were  gradually  won  back  from  the  Slavs  by  the  Frankish 
and  Saxon  race,  received  different  names,  notably  those  of  the 


THE  FRANK  115 

Germanic  Empire  and  of  Germany.  But  it  is  none  the  less 
true  that  this  Frankish  and  Saxon  race  dwelt  there  and  con- 
tinued to  predominate  until  there  too,  and  through  the  same 
causes  as  in  France,  it  degenerated  from  its  original  character. 
More  than  once  we  shall  have  occasion  to  notice  the  strange 
vicissitudes  and  curious  shif tings  from  one  place  to  another 
which  the  names  of  peoples  and  countries  undergo. 

Now  that  we  have  seen  our  Franks  well  encamped,  as  they 
ought  to  be  from  the  beginning  in  history,  face  to  face  with  all 
the  Old  Germans,  let  us  continue  the  history  of  events  after 
their  settlement. 

The  Frankish  band,  we  saw,  when  it  came  to  a  halt,  at  first 
maintained  the  organisation  it  had  formed  for  transport  pur- 
poses, for  military  purposes,  but  the  agricultural  emigrant,  on 
setting  foot  once  more  on  an  estate,  grasped  anew  the  instru- 
ment of  his  independence.  Thence  arose  the  struggle  between 
the  Odinid  warrior  and  the  agricultural  emigrant,  between  the 
head  of  the  State  and  the  owner  of  the  estate,  between  the 
prince  and  the  private  man.  It  is  our  purpose  to  watch  this 
curious  duel  between  the  patriarchal  truste  and  the  estate 
with  its  particularist  family. 

The  duel  would  not  have  lasted  long  had  not  the  patriarchal 
truste  been  of  service  in  guaranteeing  the  security  of  the  land 
of  the  particularist  family.  It  was  with  that  object  in  view 
that  the  Frankish  emigrants  had  united  themselves  to  the 
Odinid  warrior.  It  was  for  that  object  that  they  remained 
friendly  to  him  for  some  time.  The  story  of  the  dismissal  of 
Merovig's  own  son  to  Thuringia  by  emigrants  who  had  only 
just  settled  at  Tournay,  is  enough  to  show  what  would  have 
immediately  happened  to  the  military  chief  and  his  truste,  if 
there  had  not  still  been  some  reason  for  their  existence,  after 
the  first  invasion  had  been  successfully  accomplished. 

In  short,  the  warrior  and  the  emigrant  continued  to  pursue 
the  same  object — namely,  the  satisfaction  of  their  desire  for 
new  lands  ;  and  on  that  point  they  were  agreed  and  supported 
each  other. 

But  once  the  possession  of  the  land  was  assured,  they  were 
not  agreed  as  to  how  to  benefit  by  it. 

The  warrior  attempted  to  exploit  the  country  by  using  the 
means  furnished  by  government — namely,  war,  taxation,  justice, 


n6  THE  FRANK 

civil  administration — and  also  claimed  the  right  of  living  at  the 
expense  of  the  people. 

The  emigrant  intended  to  exploit  the  country  through  the 
estate,  and  would  allow  no  one,  certainly  not  the  Government, 
to  live  at  his  expense. 

We  shall  watch  the  development  of  the  two  institutions 
side  by  side  :  the  administration  of  a  sovereign,  and  the  inde- 
pendent estate ;  the  one  a  creation  of  the  patriarchal  truste, 
the  other  a  creation  of  the  particularist  family. 

The  first  sharp  division  between'  the  warrior  and  the  emigrants 
came  about  when  Clovis,  the  leader  of  the  Franks  of  Tournay, 
obeying  the  passion  which  burned  in  every  Odinid,  crossed  the 
borders  of  the  Rhenish  basin  and  definitively  made  Paris  the 
centre  of  an  armed  invasion.  The  Franks  followed  him  even 
on  this  foolish  enterprise,  but  it  was  for  the  last  time.  In  that 
expedition  there  was  still  a  Frank  chief,  as  before,  at  the  head 
of  a  chosen  army  drawn  from  two  sources  :  the  band  of  Franks 
and  the  so-called  Roman  legions.  But  once  Clovis  was  installed, 
dead,  and  buried  at  Paris,  the  only  kind  of  army  which  hence- 
forth followed  the  Frank  chief  was  one  which  was  recruited  from 
the  original  inhabitants  of  the  conquered  country  by  means 
of  a  "  pressgang."  The  special  convocation  of  the  Franks  no 
longer  met,  their  votes  of  assent  were  no  more  heard,  there  was 
no  longer  a  Champs  de  Mars.1 

But  another  point  must  be  mentioned  here.  Of  course  the 
emigrant  who  had  settled  in  the  region  from  which  recruits 
were  obtained  en  masse  must  have  been  required  to  join  the 
army  with  the  rest.  However,  in  the  first  place,  the  levy  was 
made  by  preference  in  districts  that  were  still  but  little  in- 
habited by  Franks.  In  the  second  place,  the  constraint  put  upon 
men  to  join  the  army  was  not  so  great  but  that  many  of  them 
stayed  at  home  ;  so  much  so  that  it  was  considered  necessary 
to  institute  a  fine  against  them.  In  the  third  place,  it  was  all 
very  well  to  institute  fines,  but  it  must  have  been  more  difficult 
to  collect  them.  Since  the  owner  of  the  estate  was  called  upon 
to  arm  himself  and  his  men,  or  a  part  of  his  men,  it  was  natural 
enough  that  the  thought  should  occur  to  him  to  use  this  following 
for  defending  the  inviolability  and  freedom  of  his  person  and  his 

1  On  this  subject  see  La  Monarchic  Jranque,  by  Fustel  de  Coulanges, 
p.  288  ff. 


THE  FRANK  117 

estate  against  the  collector  of  fines.  We  have  a  proof  of  this 
tendency  in  the  "  recognitions  of  immunity  "  that  were  freely 
granted  by  the  king. 

This  undoubted  separation  between  the  warrior  and  the 
band  of  emigrants  is  highly  characteristic  of  both  parties.  I 
need  not  point  out  how  much  it  is  in  accordance  with  their 
natural  tendencies. 

But  the  result  of  it  was  that  the  chief  with  his  truste  formed 
an  organisation  of  his  own,  altogether  apart  from  the  emigrants. 
When  he  was  thus  his  own  master,  what  sort  of  organisation  did 
he  adopt  ?  The  organisation  of  Roman  government,  pure  and 
simple. 

This  is  replete  with  Social  Science. 

What !  The  chief  of  a  Germanic  truste  adopted  at  the  first 
the  Roman  system  of  administration  !  Is  it  not  a  fact  that 
that  administration  was  the  result  of  a  form  of  society  absolutely 
peculiar  to  the  Greeks  and  the  Romans,  and  still  more  pro- 
nounced with  the  Romans  than  with  the  Greeks  ?  Is  it 
not  a  fact  that  it  was  unique  in  the  society  of  antiquity  ? 
Or  is  it  really  true,  after  all,  and  proved  by  historical 
evidence,  that  it  was  simply  a  form  of  government  used  by  a 
tribe  of  Germans  ! 

Historians  have  got  into  great  difficulties  over  this  point  too. 
It  is  true,  nevertheless,  that  the  barbarian  chiefs,  the  Old 
Germans,  not  only  Clovis  but  also  the  kings  of  the  Visigoths, 
the  Burgundians,  and  all  the  Germanic  tribes  that  we  enumer- 
ated above,  adopted  the  Roman  system  as  it  stood,  and  for 
the  very  good  reason  that  the  Romans  had  adopted  the  barbarian 
system  a  long  time  back. 

People  who  have  studied  Roman  law  know  very  well  that 
the  true  Roman  law,  the  law  of  the  Quirites,  gradually  gave 
place  to  the  law  of  the  aliens — that  is  to  say,  to  the  private  law 
of  the  barbarians — as  Rome  extended  little  by  little  outside 
her  walls.  This  change  went  on  with  extraordinary  rapidity, 
especially  from  the  time  of  the  empire.  So  that  Roman  law 
at  the  end  of  the  empire  is  not  Roman  law,  but  rather  the 
common  law  of  the  barbarians.  The  only  difference  is  that 
the  Roman  lawyers  put  it  all  into  admirable  order. 

Now,  what  happened  to  the  private  law  of  the  Romans 
happened  also  to  their  public  law,  to  their  political  institutions. 


n8  THE  FRANK 

The    real,  purely  Roman   institutions  were,  in  the  end,    re- 
placed, even  at  Rome;  by  barbarian  institutions. 

But  historians  have  not  taken  this  into  account  in  dealing 
with  the  matter  before  us.  So  that  M.  Fustel  de  Coulanges, 
for  instance,  when  he  finds  that  the  chiefs  of  the  trustee  adopted 
all  the  Roman  institutions  of  the  period  of  the  empire,  exclaims, 
"  These  Germans,  who  are  so  much  cried  up,  copied  the  Romans 
in  everything.  They  have  not  a  single  original  idea  ;  they  have 
not  introduced  one  new  institution  of  even  the  smallest  worth  ! 
Everything  about  them  is  Roman  ! "  I  believe  he  would 
gladly  have  said,  "  That  embalms  the  Roman !  "  And  he 
does  not  observe  that  it  is  the  Roman  who  embalms,  or  rather 
infects  and  corrupts,  the  barbarian. 

Therein  lies  the  solution  of  this  historical  problem.  The 
barbarians  were  completely  Romanised  because  the  Romans 
had  been  completely  barbarised. 

Rome  had  completely  fallen  back  upon  the  clan  system. 
I  will  explain  why,  presently.  But  she  did  add  something  to 
that  system  as  well  as  to  the  private  law  of  the  aliens,  namely, 
preciseness  and  regularity  of  forms,  in  imitation  of  the  exacti- 
tude she  showed  in  her  ancient  administration,  which  she 
owed,  in  the  first  place,  to  that  body  of  great  landed  proprietors, 
who,  under  the  name  of  patricians,  had  organised  and  managed 
it  as  their  peculiar  work  during  the  first  centuries  of  her  existence. 
But  now  that  we  have  reached  the  moment  when  the  particu- 
larist  family  was  settled  on  estates  on  Roman  soil — estates 
which  formed  a  social  and  political  organisation,  which  is  still 
that  of  the  future,  that  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  races — it  is  necessary 
to  know  why  the  old  Roman  administration,  entirely  founded 
as  it  was  on  an  admirable  government  of  landed  proprietors, 
did  not  last. 

The  first  founders  of  Rome  were,  it  is  true,  solitary  agri- 
cultural emigrants,  like  the  founders  of  the  particularist  family. 
They  too  tried  to  build  up  both  the  private  and  the  public 
independence  of  the  individual.  But  there  were  no  coasts  of 
the  North  Sea,  no  seacoast  fisheries  to  help  them  to  secure 
their  entire  independence  at  the  first.  They  were  at  once 
obliged  to  seek  a  guarantee  of  independence  in  association  : 
that  was  what  Romulus  achieved.  Thus  they  became  not 
absolutely  isolated  landowners,  with  no  one  but  themselves 


THE  FRANK  119 

to  rely  upon  in  times  of  need,  but  a  corporation  of  landowners 
united  for  the  advantage  of  all.  That  was  the  constitution 
of  Home.  They  formed  a  "  bourgeoisie,"  as  it  would  still  be 
called  in  Switzerland. 

This  body  of  bourgeois,  landed  proprietors,  could  not  be 
maintained  unless  great  caution  was  used  in  the  choice  of  its 
recruits  and  unless  great  cleverness  was  shown  in  governing 
those  of  the  new-comers  whom  it  did  not  admit  to  its  privileges. 
If  the  Romans  had  created  other  bodies  like  their  own  in  other 
towns  besides  Rome,  those  bodies  would  have  been  able  to  grow 
like  their  own  and  become  their  rivals,  and  perhaps  successful 
rivals.  So,  when  they  took  possession  of  neighbouring  towns, 
they  only  gave  them  the  management  of  their  own  small, 
purely  local  interests  ;  and  those  of  the  inhabitants  who  were 
admitted  to  Roman  citizenship  were  obliged  to  come  to  Rome 
to  exercise  their  rights  in  the  general  affairs  of  the  republic, 
their  right  of  voting,  and  their  right  of  admission  to  the  public 
offices  of  pretor,  of  consul,  etc.  Rome  governed  the  whole  of 
Italy  on  this  principle.  Such  was  her  ancient  administration, 
her  original  system  of  government.  She  maintained  it  until 
she  was  obliged  to  go  outside  Italy,  in  order  to  strike  a  blow 
at  the  power  of  Carthage  in  Sicily,  which  was  too  near  not  to 
be  dangerous. 

But  when  Rome  had  conquered  Sicily,  and,  with  no  rival 
in  the  field,  was  able  to  extend  her  conquests  outside  Italy, 
she  created  the  "  province "  and  the  "  proconsul "  for  the 
distant  tribes,  which  were  annexed  in  a  body — that  is  to  say,  she 
adopted  for  those  regions  the  barbarian  form  of  government, 
the  government  by  the  chief  of  the  clan,  in  short. 

The  proconsul  was  nothing  more  than  the  chief  of  a  clan, 
appointed  by  the  republic,  who  really  took  the  place  of  or  was 
put  over  the  chiefs  of  the  barbarian  clans  among  which  he  was 
sent.  With  his  double  retinue  of  legionaries  and  functionaries, 
whom  he  completely  won  to  his  side  by  the  profits  he  allowed 
them  to  make  out  of  the  province,  he  was  nothing  else  than  a 
Roman  at  the  head  of  a  truste.  Look  at  Verres  ;  look  at  them 
all.  They  are  all  the  same  in  spite  of  the  differences  which 
the  diversity  of  their  personal  character  impresses  on  their 
administration. 

Now  it  is  obvious  that  it  soon  became  the  dream  of  the 


120  THE  FRANK 

most  eminent  of  the  proconsuls,  when  they  were  recalled  to 
Rome  at  the  end  of  their  term  of  office,  to  become  consuls  in 
Rome  itself,  and  govern,  or  rather  work,  Rome  for  their  own 
advantage,  like  a  province.  Look  at  Marius,  Sulla,  Pompey, 
and  Caesar  in  succession.  The  dream  could  be  realised  by  the 
proconsul,  if  on  his  return  to  Rome  he  came  with  several  legions 
as  his  truste  and  with  riches  enough  to  enable  him  to  buy  as 
many  partisans  among  the  people  as  would  be  necessary  to 
procure  him,  on  any  terms,  all  the  honours  and  all  the  public 
offices. 

That  is  the  way  the  government  of  Rome — the  Roman 
administration — came  to  be  an  exact  model  of  the  barbarian 
truste.  The  proconsuls  shaped  themselves  to  it  in  the  bar- 
barian provinces. 

The  provincial  Roman  government  was  simply  the  form  of 
government  used  by  the  truste,  but  it  was  practised  by  Romans 
among  barbarians.  The  imperial  Roman  government  did  not 
differ  from  the  provincial  government  except  that  it  was  held 
at  Rome.  The  organisation  of  Roman  territory,  then,  since  the 
withdrawal  of  the  great  proconsuls — Marius,  Sulla,  Pompey, 
Caesar,  Octavius — altogether  degenerated  into  a  system  of 
clan  government,  of  government  by  trustes  in  the  barbarian 
fashion. 

That  accounts  for  the  Asiatic  aspect  which  the  Roman 
Empire  wore  after  the  fall  of  the  republic — that  is  to  say, 
when  the  really  original  government  of  the  bourgeoisie  of  Rome 
had  passed  away. 

The  barbarians  had  in  reality  already  conquered  Rome  and 
destroyed  the  Romans  when  the  empire  was  formed,  since 
the  private  law  of  the  aliens  and  the  public  law  of  the  provinces 
had  caused  the  law  of  the  Quirites  and  the  government  of  the 
city  of  Rome  to  disappear. 

From  these  premises  we  draw  two  conclusions  : 

1.  The  original  constitution  of  Rome  had  not  the  principle 
of  endurance  that  the  particularist  form  of  society  possessed. 

In  short,  there  is  no  comparison  possible  between  two  such 
institutions  as  these  :  on  the  one  hand  a  body  of  citizens,  landed 
proprietors,  who  in  a  single  town  undertook  to  conduct  the 
public  affairs  of  an  immense  territory — of  Italy  in  the  first  place, 
and,  later,  of  the  coasts  of  Africa  and  a  great  part  of  Europe  and 


THE  FRANK  121 

of  Nearer  Asia  ;  on  the  other  hand,  simple  owners  of  estates, 
absolutely  independent  one  of  the  other,  who  each  undertook 
to  manage  entirely  his  own  estate  in  every  respect.  It  is  clear 
that  the  citizen  body  must  have  been  unequal  to  the  task  even 
when  its  territory  extended  only  over  Italy,  and  much  more  so 
when  it  extended  beyond ;  while,  on  the  contrary,  the  inde- 
pendent owners  had  no  more  exhausted  their  power  when  they 
had  filled  a  continent  than  when  they  had  filled  a  province  :  each 
man  had  only  his  own  estate  to  look  after.  It  seems  clear  that 
when  the  citizen  body  came  to  an  end,  everything  that 
depended  on  it  must  have  given  way,  and  could  not  have 
been  easily  built  up  again ;  while,  on  the  contrary,  when  any 
of  the  independent  estate  owners  died,  they  alone  disappeared, 
and  were  easily  replaced  by  others. 

Therein  lies  the  immense  difference  between  the  social  and 
political  constitution  of  the  Romans  and  the  social  and  political 
constitution  of  the  races  with  particularist  families.  It  explains 
how  the  Roman  Republic  cracked  at  the  frontiers  of  Italy  while 
the  American  Republic  does  not  crack  though  it  extends  over 
an  immeasurably  larger  area.  It  explains  how  it  is  that  the 
Roman  type  disappeared,  perished  with  Rome,  while  the  type 
of  the  particularist  family  is  as  full  of  life  to-day  as  it  was  two 
thousand  years  ago. 

2.  The  Merovingian  chief,  the  head  of  a  truste,  had  no 
difficulty  in  adopting  the  proconsular  and  imperial  system  of 
Roman  administration. 

It  was  natural  to  him,  since  it  was  his  own  system  :  the  only 
difference  was  that  it  was  made  more  convenient  for  him  in 
certain  regards  by  the  formalism  and  red-tape  which  the 
Romans  had  added  to  it  out  of  respect  for  the  traditions  of 
exactitude  and  order  of  the  administration  of  the  old  Roman 
citizens. 

Let  us  examine  this  imperial  or  Merovingian  administration 
(for  they  are  the  same)  in  greater  detail. 

Gaul  was  divided,  for  the  purposes  of  government,  just  as  it 
was  in  the  time  of  the  Celts,  into  districts,  to  each  of  which  the 
name  of  pagus  was  given  in  ancient  times.  The  term  pagus 
was  later  replaced  by  civitas,  in  accordance  with  a  translation 
which  Caesar  used  in  his  Commentaries.  The  pagus  consisted 
of  a  Gaulish  town  which  held  sway  over  a  small  rural  district  and 


122  THE  FRANK 

a  few  villages.  The  Eoman  emperor  or  the  Merovingian  prince 
sent  as  their  deputy  to  each  pagus  or  civitas  one  of  their  faithful 
followers,  a  "  companion "  of  their  truste  :  conies,  a  count. 
Tacitus  uses  the  word  to  translate  antrustion,  the  faithful 
follower  ; l  it  was  the  title  which  the  emperors  adopted  for  the 
governor  whom  they  appointed  to  the  civitas.  The  great 
proconsul  and  the  large  province  had  actually  disappeared  : 
the  count,  a  proconsul  on  a  smaller  scale,  was  more  convenient 
and  less  dangerous  to  the  emperor. 

When  it  was  advantageous  to  place  several  civitates 
under  the  command  of  a  superior  officer,  the  emperor  or  the 
Merovingian  prince  sent  a  trusty  comrade  of  greater  capacity 
or  more  tested  fidelity  to  occupy  a  temporary  position  of 
command  over  several  counts.  The  empire  gave  him  also  a 
thoroughly  barbarian  name,  which  had  never  figured  among 
the  appellations  of  officers  in  ancient  Kome  :  dux,  chief,  duke. 

Had  a  Celt  belonging  to  the  times  before  Caesar  come  back 
to  the  world,  he  would  have  found  the  whole  administrative 
system  of  his  own  time  still  in  existence,  with  only  two 
differences  : 

1.  The  chiefs  of  small  clans  in  the  pagi  and  the    occa- 
sional chiefs  of  confederations   of  pagi  were  now  appointed 
by  the  emperor  or  the  Merovingian,  instead  of  by  the  pagi 
themselves.     They  were  known  as   counts  and  dukes,  names 
that  would  have  been  at  once  intelligible  to  our  Celt. 

2.  The  formalities,  the  official  documents  (diplomas),  gave  an 
air  of  better  order  and  superior  intelligence  to  the  same  methods 
of  governing  the  country. 

The  chief  duty  of  the  count,  be  it  understood,  was  to  levy 
taxes.  That  was  what  his  official  documents  (diploma)  made 
clear  to  him.  He  raised  as  much  money  as  he  could  and  in 
whatever  way  he  could,  employing  the  methods  a  proconsul, 
a  pasha,  or  any  tribal  chief  in  a  subordinate  position  would  use. 
The  emperor  or  the  Merovingian  prince  had  this  much  control 
over  him,  that  they  could  disgrace  him  if  the  taxes  did  not  come 
in  properly.  So  he  had  to  find  means  of  some  kind  or  another 
of  sending  money  to  his  master.  I  subjoin  an  example  of  the 
way  things  were  done  : 

In  the  civitas  of  Tours  there  was  a  count  called  Eunomus, 
1  Comes,  the  antrustion  ;  comitatus,  the  truste :  Germania,  xiii. 


THE  FRANK  123 

who  had  a  man  called  Injuriosus  as  his  lieutenant  (vicarius). 
They  procured  the  right  amount  of  money  which  had  to  be  sent 
to  Childebert,  as  tribute,  from  four  partners,  two  Jews  and  two 
Christians.  They  made  out  promissory  notes  to  the  four  partners. 
When  they  came  to  claim  the  money,  Injuriosus  invited  the 
Jew  Armentarius,  the  one  who  was  spokesman,  to  stay  to  dinner. 
After  dinner  they  went  out  together,  and  the  next  day  the  four 
partners  were  lying,  assassinated,  at  the  bottom  of  a  well  near 
Injuriosus'  house.  When  they  did  not  come  back,  their  relations 
were  troubled,  went  to  Tours,  and  discovered  the  facts,  and  the 
bodies  were  found  in  the  well.  Injuriosus  was  at  once  suspected 
of  the  crime,  but  he  denied  it,  and  proposed  to  justify  himself 
by  an  oath.  The  others  preferred  to  appeal  to  Childebert. 
Injuriosus  came  before  the  king  to  plead  his  cause,  and  con- 
scientiously waited  three  days  till  the  setting  of  the  sun.  "  As 
his  adversaries  did  not  put  in  an  appearance,  and  no  one  brought 
an  accusation  against  him  in  the  matter,  he  returned  home."  1 
That  was  one  of  the  ways  of  raising  tribute -money  at  little 
expense.  After  that  was  paid,  everything  collected  from  the 
people  was  pure  personal  profit. 

Besides  levying  the  taxes,  it  was  the  duty  of  the  count  to 
hold  a  court  of  justice  periodically,  either  at  the  chief  town  in 
the  civitas  or  in  the  villages  which  he  visited  on  his  circuit. 
He  was  sole  judge.  His  place  could  be  taken  by  his  lieutenant, 
his  vicarius,  a  man  of  his  own  choosing.  He  summoned  some 
of  the  leading  inhabitants,  also  of  his  own  choosing,  "  to  help 
him,"  but  not  to  judge  :  they  were  called  the  boni  homines  or 
rachimburys.  They  numbered  from  three  to  seven,  or  even 
more,  and  only  passed  judgment  if  the  count,  in  his  own  absence 
and  that  of  his  vicarius,  allowed  them  to  do  so  in  his  name. 
The  public  were  summoned  to  be  present.  It  was  very  much 
like  a  pasha's  court  of  justice  ! 

Besides  levying  taxes  and  administering  justice  (such 
justice  as  it  was!), the  count  was  responsible  for  the  maintenance 
of  law  and  order.  He  had  also  to  levy  an  army  when  it  was 
the  prince's  desire  to  make  war.  We  saw  that  under  the 
successors  of  Clovis  the  army  was  levied  by  means  of  press- 
gangs,  by  recruiting  men  wholesale  in  a  merciless  manner. 
Men  who  were  strong  enough  to  venture  to  resist,  remained 
1  Gregoire  de  Tours,  vii.  23. 


124  THE  FRANK 

behind,  and  were  obliged  to  pay  a  fine.  I  should  not  imagine 
that  they  paid  it  every  time,  though  no  doubt  that  would 
have  pleased  M.  Fustel  de  Coulanges. 

In  short,  the  count  was  the  sole  representative  of  the  emperor 
or  the  Merovingian  prince.  He  was  their  factotum. 

Consequently,  it  was  essential  that  he  should  be  liable  to 
dismissal ;  and  in  theory  he  was  nominated  only  for  a  time, 
very  likely  for  only  a  year.  But  he  sometimes  had  means  of 
getting  his  appointment  prolonged ;  in  fact,  that  goes  without 
saying,  and  "  sometimes  "  is  euphemistic.  I  will  quote  as  an 
example  a  story  which  I  particularly  remember,  because  the 
events  described  in  it  take  an  unexpected  turn,  which  adds 
still  more  point  to  it.  In  order  to  get  his  appointment  extended, 
a  count  despatched  one  of  his  sons  to  the  king  with  presents. 
The  son  gave  the  presents  in  his  own  name,  and  went  back 
invested  with  his  father's  office  ! 

"  A  certain  man  named  Leudastus,  a  slave  born  on  the 
king's  estate  and  serving  in  the  royal  kitchens,  a  run- a  way  on 
several  occasions  (in  other  respects  an  excellent  fellow  !),  suc- 
ceeded in  becoming  head  of  the  queen's  stables,  and  grew  rich 
in  that  capacity.  On  the  queen's  death  he  gave  full  many  a 
present  to  the  king,  in  order  to  obtain  the  same  post  in  his 
service  ;  then  from  count  of  the  stable  (constable,  if  you  like  !) 
he  became  count  of  the  civitas  of  Tours,  in  which  capacity  his 
conduct  was  more  overbearing,  haughtier,  and  more  rapacious 
than  that  of  any  of  his  predecessors."  l 

That  was  the  way  to  obtain  a  post  and  continue  in  it. 

But  there  is  one  more  point  to  be  added  :  the  count  personally 
chose  all  his  own  circle,  all  his  agents  ;  he  appointed  them  in 
his  own  name  ;  he,  in  his  own  person,  and  not  the  king,  received 
their  oath  to  perform  their  offices  faithfully.  The  king  did  not 
figure  there  at  all,  any  more  than  the  emperor  did  before. 

All  this  might  be  as  truly  said  of  the  small  tribe.  It  is 
really  the  picture  of  an  ordinary  truste  with  a  count  at  its  head. 

The  principal  agents,  then,  that  were  appointed  were  : 

The  count's  lieutenant  (the  vicarius),  his  substitute  or  his 
assistant  in  everything. 

The  count's  officers  (the  centenarii,  the  centurions,  or  officers, 
as  one  might  say),  who  were  secondary  agents  to  help  or  take 
1  Gregoire  de  Tours,  v.  48,  49. 


THE  FRANK  125 

the  place  of  the  count  in  duties  of  secondary  importance  or  of 
a  more  local  nature,  such  as  small  lawsuits,  or  the  government 
of  parts  of  the  pagus,  etc. 

Behind  the  agents  there  was  very  likely  a  crowd  of  clients. 
With  a  government  of  this  description  there  were  many  oppor- 
tunities of  doing  people  both  good  and  bad  turns  ! 

The  count  lived  in  the  town,  the  centre  of  the  civitas  or 
pagus.  That  was  also  the  custom  of  the  Roman  governor  and 
of  the  Celtic  or  German  chieftain  of  a  clan  ! 

He  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  management  of  rural  landed 
property  belonging  to  the  fisc,  as  it  was  called — that  is 
to  say,  to  the  emperor  or  the  Merovingian  prince.  Those 
properties  were  separately  managed  by  private  agents  of  the 
king — ordinary  managers. 

The  count  probably  had  the  use  of  some  royal  villa  as  his 
country  estate  ;  but  that  was  all :  it  was  only  an  annex  to  his 
official  residence  in  the  town. 

His  whole  strength  lay  in  his  clan. 

The  small  clans  forming  the  civitates  or  counties,  to  which 
the  counts  were  sent  by  the  king's  appointment  all  over  the 
country,  were  only  the  satellites  of  the  great  clan  of  the  emperor 
or  the  Merovingian. 

This  great  central  truste  from  which  the  counts  emanated 
was  called  the  imperial  or  royal  palace  or  court — palatium  or 
domus.  The  name  was  more  frequently  applied  to  the 
truste  itself  than  to  the  urban  residences  or  country 
houses  to  which  it  went  on  occasion.  The  truste  accom- 
panied the  prince. 

The  prince  also  had  a  lieutenant,  the  major  palatii  or  major 
domus,  the  mayor  of  the  palace.  He  was  the  prime  minister, 
if  not  the  only  minister — the  grand  vizir. 

The  subordinate  offices  were  held  by  trusty  followers,  who 
were  also  called  counts  (companions) — that  is,  counts  of  the 
palace,  to  distinguish  them  from  the  city  counts.  Other  offices 
were  adorned  with  other  titles,  all  of  a  barbarian  origin — cup- 
bearer (echanson),  etc. 

The  still  more  subordinate  posts  were  held  by  numberless 
agents  of  all  classes.  There  was  a  fairly  regular  system  of 
promotion.  It  was  an  ideal  truste  !  Everyone  was  entirely 
subject  to  the  king's  will,  needless  to  say. 


126  THE  FRANK 

So  much  for  the  establishment  of  the  warrior  chief  who 
entered  Gaul  with  a  band  of  emigrants  and  soon  became  divided 
from  them,  as  we  have  seen. 

I  leave  the  reader  to  imagine,  or  rather  to  recollect,  the 
fearful  commotions  that  necessarily  arose  in  the  little  worlds 
dominated  by  trustes !  No  history  is  more  melodramatic 
than  that  of  the  Merovingians  :  the  reader  has  only  to  look 
at  any  page  of  Gregory  de  Tours  to  be  assured  of  it.  On  the 
death  of  a  Merovingian,  all  his  sons  immediately  divided  his 
truste  between  them.  Then  each  of  them  tried  to  make  the 
others  fall  into  an  ambuscade,  in  order  to  win  the  support 
of  their  followers.  If  he  failed,  his  own  followers  deserted 
him  and  joined  the  others.  He  would  then  intrigue.  His 
followers  would  return  to  his  side  :  by  that  time  the  others 
had  divided  his  followers  and  property  among  themselves. 
He  would  then  make  a  second  attempt,  with  better  success, 
and  manage  to  assassinate  one  of  his  brothers  :  in  that  way 
he  would  secure  two  tribes  for  his  side.  He  would  then  be  the 
strongest,  and  would  be  able  to  defeat  another  brother,  and 
put  him  to  death.  The  others  would  soon  share  the  same 
fate,  once  he  had  strengthened  his  following  in  this  way.  He 
would  then  be  sole  chief.  After  him,  his  sons  began  to  fight 
again.  And  so  it  went  on. 

But  events  like  these  were  not  limited  only  to  family  life. 

Clovis  too  suppressed  the  chiefs  of  other  Frankish  bands 
which  had  come  into  Gaul  as  he  did,  by  means  such  as  we  have 
just  described,  and  he  took  possession  of  all  the  Roman  territory 
that  was  left  between  the  Somme  and  the  Loire.  In  this  way 
he  extended  his  power  over  half  the  north  of  Gaul.  His  neigh- 
bours on  the  south  of  the  line  of  the  Loire  and  the  basin  of 
the  Moselle  were  the  Old  Germans  of  the  Baltic  plain,  who,  as 
we  know,  had  spread  over  the  south  of  Europe  :  there  were 
the  Visigoths  in  the  basin  of  the  Garonne,  and  the  Burgundians 
in  the  basin  of  the  Rhone.  They  employed  the  same  system 
of  government  as  he  did  :  they  too  had  their  truste,  and  carried 
out  admirably  the  Romano-Barbarian  system  of  government, 
which  they  too  found  on  the  spot.  They  also  carried  on  the 
"  game  of  clan  faction  "  among  themselves,  and  reproduced 
the  struggles  of  the  Merovingians,  which  I  have  just  described, 
with  their  neighbours  :  Merovingians,  Visigoths,  Bourguignons, 


THE  FRANK  127 

all  used  the  same  means  to  dispute  the  power.  Clovis,  who 
had  made  himself  powerful  "  by  the  means  we  know  of,"  got 
the  upper  hand  :  the  Merovingians  were  soon  the  only  princes 
on  what  was  formerly  Gallic  soil. 

But  they  still  went  on  with  their  family  fights. 

Their  neighbours  beyond  the  Rhine,  beyond  Eastern  France, 
were  different :  there  were  the  Saxons  to  the  north  of  East- 
ern France,  who  pressed  upon  their  borders  continually ; 
there  was  a  remnant  of  Old  Germans,  un-Romanised,  to  the 
east  of  Eastern  France,  who  were  being  sorely  pressed  between 
the  Saxons  and  the  Slavs  from  the  other  side  of  the  Elbe, 
and  wished  to  go  south  like  the  rest :  they  were  called  Suevi, 
or  Swabians,  Alemanni — that  is  to  say,  "  all  men,"  or  "  united 
tribes  "  ;  and  Thuringians.  South  of  Eastern  France,  the  Huns, 
a  nomad  race,  kept  descending  to  the  Main,  when  they  reached 
the  end  of  the  Danube.  These  hostile  tribes,  who  lived  close 
together,  frequently  made  coalitions  for  the  purpose  of  pene- 
trating into  France. 

In  the  face  of  so  large  an  invasion,  the  tribal  chieftains 
of  whom  we  have  spoken  joined  forces  for  a  moment,  unless 
it  happened  that  one  of  them  had  at  that  very  moment  brought 
about  a  kind  of  unity  by  conquering  the  others,  and  becoming 
sole  master.  In  any  case,  the  invaders  were  repulsed  in  battles 
on  the  Unstrut,  at  Tolbiac,  at  Chalons,  and  other  places.  The 
Saxons  kept  within  their  borders  for  a  time.  The  Huns  took 
themselves  off.  The  Thuringians,  Swabians,  and  Alemanni  were 
incorporated  with  the  Franks  :  the  first  on  the  north  of  the 
Main,  the  others  in  the  south  as  far  as  the  basin  of  the  Danube 
in  the  valley  of  the  Neckar.  The  Merovingian  king  organised, 
or  rather  extended,  his  Romano-Gallic  system  of  government 
among  these  incorporated  tribes. 

In  this  way  the  warrior  chiefs  of  the  Franks  established 
their  dominion  over  all  Gaul  and  the  whole  of  the  Rhenish 
basin  up  to  Bale  and  Constance. 

That  was  the  expanse  of  land  which  the  restless  truste 
had  of  its  own  accord  continued  to  open  up  for  Frankish 
emigrants.  There  was  no  longer  any  lack  of  land  for  them  ! 
The  warrior  chief  had  pushed  on  terribly  far  !  But  they  on 
their  part  were  not  displeased  ;  it  was  to  their  profit.  But 
how  could  that  be  ? 


128  THE  FRANK 

For  what  could  the  poor  little  estate  do  in  the  midst  of 
scuffles,  wars,  devastations,  and  under  the  immense  power 
of  the  truste  ?  How  could  it  so  much  as  exist  ? 

It  was  on  the  way  to  overthrow  that  power  entirely,  and 
to  set  up  its  own  sovereignty  in  its  stead. 

That  will  be  the  subject  of  the  next  chapter. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  FRANK 

PART  III 

Odinid  warrior,  who  organised  a  public  means  of 
JL  transport  for  the  emigrants  from  the  Saxon  plain, 
retained  his  marching  staff,  his  communal  truste,  after  his 
arrival  in  the  lands  peopled  by  Gallo-Romans  and  Old  Germans, 
and  he  made  the  truste  into  a  staff  of  public  officers  in  accordance 
with  all  the  patriarchal  traditions. 

The  agricultural  emigrants  who  had  come  from  parti- 
cularist  families  travelled  at  his  side,  but  broke  the  order  of 
march  to  settle  on  isolated  estates.  As  we  shall  see,  they 
made  their  rights  of  property  the  basis  of  a  public  power  which 
supplanted  the  other  form  of  government  and  triumphed  over 
the  patriarchal  form  of  society. 

At  the  very  outset  this  fact  strikes  us  as  curious,  that  a 
bold  and  warlike  band  of  volunteers,  which  was  victorious, 
homogeneous,  and  so  small  that  it  was  easy  for  all  its 
members  to  know  each  other  and  act  in  concert,  should  never 
for  a  moment  dream  of  forming  a  pretorian  guard,  a  body  of 
Mamelukes  or  Janissaries,  so  as  to  master  its  chief  and  wield 
the  authority  independently  of  him.  They  cannot  have  had 
the  same  conception  of  power  as  others.  They  must  have 
conceived  of  it  in  quite  an  unusual  way. 

Later  on  the  emigrants  from  the  Saxon  plain  no  longer 
formed  armed  bands,  but  passed  into  the  conquered  territory 
at  their  ease  ;  they  kept  straggling  in,  one  by  one,  at  their  own 
free  will  and  pleasure. 

Indeed,  the    Merovingian  clan,  whose    first    care  was  to 
suppress  all  the  existing  chiefs  of  Frankish  bands,  was  naturally 
very  anxious  to  preserve  its  territory  against  any  new  attempts 
9 


130  THE  FRANK 

at  armed  invasion.  If  the  Saxons  chanced  to  appear  on  the 
frontier  in  a  military  band,  the  Merovingian  prince  hurried 
to  the  spot  and  drove  them  back.  If  the  Thuringians,  the 
Swabians,  or  the  Alemanni,  whom  the  Slavs  had  dislodged 
from  Old  Germany,  made  an  inroad  in  a  body  into  the  Rhenish 
basin,  the  Merovingian  prince  first  disarmed  them,  and  then 
allowed  them  to  settle. 

When  the  emigrants  of  the  particularist  type  ceased  to 
penetrate  into  Frankish  territory  in  warlike  bands,  and  entered 
it  only  one  by  one,  there  is  no  doubt  that  they  mainly  occupied 
the  lands  nearest  the  Saxon  plain — that  is  to  say,  the  lower 
basin  of  the  Rhine,  including  the  valleys  of  the  Main  and  the 
Moselle.  They  had  no  motive  for  going  as  far  as  that  part  of 
Western  Gaul  which  slopes  down  to  the  Atlantic.  In  this  way 
two  very  distinct  groups  of  tribes  were  formed  under  Mero- 
vingian sway :  one  in  the  lower  basin  of  the  Rhine,  consisting 
of  particularist  families  in  the  main ;  the  other  in  the  basin 
of  the  Seine,  between  the  Somme  and  the  Loire,  consisting  of 
patriarchal  families  in  a  disorganised  state.  The  second  region 
was  the  only  part  of  old  Celtic  Gaul  which  completely  escaped 
all  Germanic  domination  and  remained  absolutely  Celtic  and 
Roman  till  the  arrival  of  Clovis. 

The  difference  of  their  formation  accounts  for  the  difference 
of  character  of  these  two  groups  of  people,  which  is  further 
accentuated  by  the  fact  that  their  countries  soon  came  to  be 
called  by  names  which  were  opposed  the  one  to  the  other — 
namely,  Austrasia  and  Neustria. 

Austrasia  will  evidently  be  the  place  where  we  shall  see  the 
Frankish  emigrants  develop  to  the  best  advantage.  Neustria, 
on  the  contrary,  is  the  country  where  the  Merovingian  truste 
flourished  from  the  time  of  Clovis'  arrival.  What  a  land  of 
promise  for  the  system  of  clan  government !  A  land  that 
had  remained  Celtic  !  and  which,  in  addition,  had  remained 
intact  as  a  province  under  Roman  administration.  The  empire 
had  retained  its  authority  there  ;  though  most  of  Gaul  had 
been  dismembered  by  the  first  barbarians,  this  part  had  kept 
the  name  of  Romanum  Imperium. 

There  is  a  theory  that  because  Neustria  was  the  country 
where  conditions  were  most  favourable  to  the  rule  of  the  most 
remarkable  of  the  Frankish  chiefs,  and  was  the  seat  of  his 


THE  FRANK  131 

government,  it  was  therefore  looked  upon  as  the  centre  of  the 
nation,  and  that,  therefore,  the  name  of  France  clung  to  it  rather 
than  to  the  rest  of  the  country  when  the  whole  territory  was 
conquered  and  split  up  into  new  divisions  with  different  names. 
But  it  is  certainly  untenable.  That  region  was  essentially  and 
thoroughly  Celtic.  The  kernel  of  the  Frankish  nation,  on  the 
contrary,  was  in  Austrasia.  The  Teutonic  language  continued 
to  be  spoken  there,  while  it  actually  died  out  among  the  Old 
Germans,  Visigoths,  and  Burgundians,  and  gave  place  to 
Latin  ;  it  spread  from  there  later  on,  together  with  the  particu- 
larist  family,  over  Ancient  Germany,  which  had  temporarily 
fallen  into  the  hands  of  the  Slavs.  In  this  way  Austrasia 
became  the  centre  of  a  new  Germany,  which  was  called  the 
Germanic  Empire.  Such  is  the  fate  of  names  :  an  eminently 
Celtic  people  received  the  name  of  Franks,  and  an  eminently 
Frankish  people  received  the  name  of  Germans. 

Whilst  they  congregated  chiefly  in  Austrasia,  because  of  its 
proximity  to  the  Saxon  plain,  the  emigrants  of  the  particu- 
larist type  did  not  cease  to  penetrate  in  every  direction.  They 
were  found  in  all  parts  of  the  Merovingian  territory.  But  it  is 
none  the  less  certain  that  the  particularist  influence  diminished 
in  proportion  to  the  distance  from  Austrasia,  from  the  lower 
basin  of  the  Rhine. 

Further,  Franks  were  often  found  actually  in  the  Merovingian 
truste  and  in  the  trustes  of  the  counts,  a  fact  which  helps  to 
account  for  their  diffusion  and  for  their  success  at  the  outset. 
There  seem  to  have  been  as  many  of  them  in  the  trustes  as 
there  were  Gallo-Romans  and  Old  Germans.  There  is  nothing 
surprising  in  this,  and  it  only  accentuates  one  of  the  character- 
istics we  have  already  observed  in  the  mode  of  development 
of  the  particularist  emigrant.  His  whole  object  was  not  accom- 
plished when  he  had  succeeded  in  making  his  way  comfortably 
into  Austrasia,  or  even  further ;  he  had  besides  to  make  a  first 
outlay  while  waiting  for  the  windfall,  the  purchase  perhaps  of 
an  estate,  in  any  event,  for  the  harvest ;  he  wanted  something 
that  would  be  an  ample  and  convenient  substitute  for  the  help 
the  family  used  to  give  in  the  Saxon  plain.  The  truste, 
whether  Merovingian  or  attached  to  a  count,  offered  him  a 
splendid  substitute.  It  provided,  as  we  have  seen,  numerous 
posts  of  every  grade  and  a  regular  system  of  promotion.  Its 


132  THE  FRANK 

officers  were  maintained,  and  could  also  make  as  large  profits 
as  they  wished.  In  addition,  war  offered  exceptional  oppor- 
tunities for  acquiring  booty  and  lands. 

The  truste  system,  then,  was  wonderfully  well  adapted 
to  serve  the  emigrant  as  a  ladder  by  which  he  might  attain 
to  an  estate.  How  many  people,  therefore,  must  have  passed 
through  the  trustes  of  the  kings  and  the  counts !  How 
many  examples  have  we  not  in  history,  in  hagiography,  of 
Franks  who  settled  on  an  estate  and  became  plain  private 
men  after  having  been  in  a  more  or  less  high  position 
in  a  king's  or  a  count's  truste  for  a  longer  or  shorter 
time  ! 

So  this  method  of  procedure,  which  formed  a  constituent 
part  of  the  life  of  the  particularist  family,  continued  to  be 
carried  on,  and  became  more  conspicuous,  although  it  was 
modified  according  to  circumstances.  The  emigrant  practised 
a  trade  for  a  time  in  order  to  secure  an  estate  for  himself  :  in 
Norway  he  was  a  seacoast  fisherman  ;  in  the  Saxon  plain, 
where  he  was  compelled  to  emancipate  himself  by  the  more 
active  intervention  of  his  relations,  he  made,  with  their  help, 
the  very  soil  of  the  estate  he  was  to  farm  ;  in  the  Frankish 
expeditions  he  got  booty  as  a  soldier  ;  in  the  conquered  country 
he  became  an  antrustion.  But  his  attitude  towards  these 
professions,  which  he  practised  like  anyone  else,  and  often 
better,  was  characteristic  :  he  only  devoted  himself  to  them 
because  they  were  the  means  to  an  estate,  not  because  he  had 
any  idea  of  carrying  them  on  for  long  as  objects  in  themselves. 
These  Franks,  as  we  see,  who  had  no  wish  to  be  incorporated 
permanently  in  the  truste  in  a  body  could,  without  departing 
from  their  particularist  principles,  make  use  of  it  individually 
and  for  a  time  only.  That  is  the  reason  why  we  find  them 
still  hanging  about  the  Merovingian  prince  after  they  have 
ceased  to  be  his  bodyguard.  This  evolution  is  curious,  and 
shows  why  they  did  not  have  an  inveterate  hatred  of  the 
truste,  which  in  this  way  rendered  them  so  opportune 
a  service,  and  why  they  did  not  instantly  make  a  decisive 
revolt.  Their  attitude  towards  it  was  such  that  they  managed 
to  defend  themselves  against  its  malpractices,  whilst  they 
made  use  of  the  advantages  it  offered  till  the  time  came  when 
they  succeeded  in  building  up  into  its  full  strength  the  superior 


THE  FRANK  133 

and  sovereign  power  of  the  estate,  which  ultimately  overthrew 
the  Merovingians  and  the  system  of  trustes. 

However,  the  truste  was  far  from  being  the  only  transitory 
and  lucrative  profession  to  which  the  particularist  emigrant 
turned.  In  the  first  place,  there  were  other  besides  public 
offices  in  the  truste  itself  :  there  were  private  posts  as  well, 
and  many  of  them.  In  the  king's  or  the  count's  "  house  " 
there  was  employment  for  artisans  of  all  trades,  and  an  opening 
for  arts  as  well  as  crafts.  There  was  also  the  management  of 
the  property  belonging  to  the  Treasury — that  is  to  say,  belong- 
ing to  the  king — immense  properties,  which  had  either  to  be 
kept  up  or  to  be  developed,  and  which  were  scattered  about 
in  different  parts  of  the  country  :  agricultural  and  grazing 
lands,  forests,  magnificent  moors.  An  excellent  training- 
ground  for  an  agricultural  emigrant ! 

It  must  not  be  forgotten,  moreover,  that  we  are  no  longer 
on  the  poor  soil  of  the  Saxon  plain,  from  which  the  wandering 
Cherusci  gradually  retired  before  the  advancing  Saxons ; 
we  are  in  the  rich  country  of  a  sedentary  and  agricultural 
people,  who  have  stood  their  ground  before  the  invaders.  What 
a  number  of  posts  there  were  to  be  filled,  of  trades  of  all  sorts 
to  be  practised  to  advantage  among  the  rich  members  of  the 
Gallo-Roman  population !  What  opportunities  for  learning 
agriculture  !  What  a  land  of  Cockayne  for  the  poor  Frankish 
emigrant !  It  is  easy  to  understand  his  readiness  to  accommo- 
date himself  temporarily,  with  a  few  reservations,  to  the  ways 
of  the  Merovingians. 

There  is  no  difficulty,  either,  in  understanding  how  he  accom- 
plished the  wonderful  transition  from  small  farming  to  high 
farming,  which  we  shall  soon  have  to  consider. 

At  length  he  was  established,  after  practising  some  trade 
or  other  for  a  time,  if  it  were  necessary,  on  an  estate  of  his 
own,  one  that  he  had  found  for  himself  in  a  fine  situation, 
undeveloped,  or  abandoned,  or  belonging  to  a  country  house 
he  had  acquired,  or  that  he  had  been  clever  enough  to  win  in 
return  for  some  service.  How  did  he  set  about  working  it  ? 

Let  us  carefully  follow  all  the  steps  of  his  emancipation. 

We  have  already  seen  how  he  supported  his  claim  to  be 
the  independent  master  of  an  estate  by  resisting  the  king's 
taxes  in  an  exceptional  manner,  so  that  M.  Fustel  de  Coulanges, 


134  THE  FRANK 

"  the  great  extortioner  of  the  Franks,"  in  spite  of  all  his  docu- 
mental evidence,  feels  obliged  to  declare  in  two  successive 
works  that  he  believes  at  bottom  that  the  Franks  very  seldom 
paid  taxes.  We  have  seen  another  no  less  remarkable  proof 
of  the  independence  to  which  the  Frank  laid  claim  on  his  estate  : 
he  required  that  no  agent  of  the  king  should  enter  it  on  any 
business  whatsoever  of  a  public  character ;  he  undertook 
to  do  that  business  himself.  In  this  matter,  his  action  was 
not  grounded  on  the  fact  that  the  people  on  the  estate  were 
slaves  and  dependent  upon  him,  but  directly  on  the  inviol- 
ability of  the  estate  ;  for  he  intended  to  keep  order  among, 
and  dispense  justice  to,  not  only  the  serfs,  but  the  free  men, 
Franks  like  himself,  for  the  very  reason  that  they  were  upon 
his  land — an  absolutely  new  procedure. 

But  it  is  not  enough  merely  to  state  the  claims  which  the 
Frankish  landowner  made  and  the  success  he  met  with :  we 
have  still  to  see  what  it  was  that  caused  him  to  succeed  so  well. 

In  the  first  place,  in  order  to  realise  matters  better  by  a 
contrast,  let  us  get  an  idea  of  how  an  estate  was  managed  before 
the  arrival  of  the  Franks,  in  the  decadent  period  of  the  empire. 

The  estate  was  cultivated  by  a  band  of  slaves  who  lived 
in  a  troop,  lodged  in  a  cabin,  were  divided  into  squads  of  ten 
for  purposes  of  work,  and  were  under  the  complete  power 
of  a  chosen  slave  called  the  Villicus.  The  landowner  lived 
in  the  town  principally,  the  centre  of  the  civitas,  where,  more- 
over, he  was  bound  by  the  edicts  of  the  emperors  to  perform 
the  duties  of  a  curialis — that  is  to  say,  of  a  member  of  the 
municipality.  Not  only  was  he  forced  to  be  a  member  of  it, 
but  he  had  to  take  his  share  of  the  duties  connected  with  it, 
and  be  duumvir,  for  example — that  is  to  say,  municipal  consul. 
In  both  these  ways  he  was  made  responsible  with  his  own 
fortune  for  the  taxes  of  the  whole  of  the  civitas,  and  was  charged 
in  his  turn  with  the  duty  of  collecting  them.  All  historians 
have  drawn  attenlion  to  the  fact  that  the  development  of 
these  urban  centres  among  the  Gauls  was  far  greater  in  the 
times  of  the  Romans  than  in  the  times  of  the  Celts.  The 
master  probably  went  from  time  to  time  to  his  country  house — 
or  his  country  houses.  It  also  happened  that  he  went  there 
fairly  often,  and,  on  certain  occasions,  for  a  visit  of  some  length  ; 
but  he  went  there  as  Cicero,  Horace,  or  Pliny  did — merely 


THE  FRANK  135 

for  a  stay  in  the  country.  His  home  was  not  there.  It  is 
true  that  he  sometimes  took  an  interest  in  agriculture,  even 
to  a  considerable  degree ;  but  in  spite  of  that,  he  was  not  a 
real  man  of  the  country,  a  man  living  on  the  spot,  who  devoted 
himself  to  the  management  of  his  landed  property  and  to 
the  personal  direction  of  the  men  on  his  estate.  Public  affairs, 
intellectual  pursuits,  worldly  intercourse,  the  pleasures  of 
the  town  or  country,  were  ordinarily  the  very  fount  of  his 
existence.  This  was  the  result  of  his  mixed  patriarchal  and 
urban  origin,  Celtic  and  Roman. 

M.  Fustel  de  Coulanges,  after  having  collected  all  the 
documents  he  can  find  to  prove  that  a  master  such  as  we  have 
just  described  was  practically  a  lord  of  the  manor  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  is  nevertheless  obliged  to  conclude  that  the  Roman  land- 
owner was  at  bottom  only  half  rural  :  that  is  the  whole  point. 
And  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  he  is  dealing  with  only  the 
best  examples  of  Roman  landowners,  not  the  majority.  "  It 
is  a  certain  fact,"  he  says,  "  that  all  the  literature  we  have 
of  the  fourth  and  fifth  century  "  (observe,  however,  how  near 
we  get  to  the  Frankish  epoch)  "  depicts  the  Roman  aristocracy 
as  a  rural  as  much  as  an  urban  class."  (Here  is  the  confession  ! 
Urban,  then,  as  much  as  rural !)  "  It  is  urban  inasmuch  as 
it  holds  the  magistracies  and  governs  the  cities."  (Nothing 
more  !)  "  It  is  rural  in  its  interests  "  (absentee  landlords  of 
the  worst  type,  then,  are  rural !)  "  because  it  spends  the  greater 
part  of  its  existence  in  the  country  "  (yes,  merely  for  change 
of  air  !),  "  in  its  tastes  "  (yes,  in  its  taste  for  horses,  for  dogs, 
for  hunting,  which  are  far  from  excluding  town  pleasures).1 

The  system  of  land  culture  which  I  have  just  described 
was  called  "  direct "  :  it  is  easy  to  picture  the  band  of  slaves 
managed  by  a  slave,  and  the  master  coming  from  the  town 
just  to  see  how  the  machine  was  working,  and  to  wind  it  up 
again.  Observe  once  more  that  that  was  the  best  type.  Many 
masters  left  everything  to  the  head  slave,  or  were  quite  un- 
acquainted with  the  others,  and  simply  enjoyed  the  estate 
without  accepting  any  of  its  responsibilities. 

The  conclusion  is  that  the  staff  of  labourers  on  a  Roman 
estate  had  no  solid  bond  of  attachment  to  the  land  or  the 
master. 

1  L'Alleu  et  le  domaine  rural,  pp.  94-96. 


136  THE  FRANK 

Apart  from  direct  land  culture,  there  was  "  indirect " 
cultivation  by  farmers,  by  coloni.  By  large  farmers  ?  No  ! 
There  was  no  question  of  large  farmers  ;  if  a  man  were  free 
and  wealthy,  he  bought,  and  did  not  rent  his  land.  By  quite 
small  farmers,  then  ?  Yes,  by  free  men  without  a  halfpenny 
in  their  pocket  and  without  ability,  who  were  reduced  to  the 
cultivation  of  land.  They  were  called  cultivators. 

At  first  there  were  very  few  of  them.  Bad  times  during 
the  empire  increased  their  number.  As  they  hardly  ever 
managed  to  pay  their  rent,  they  became  shackled  by  debt, 
and  were  obliged  to  go  on  cultivating  the  land  until  they  had 
paid  the  last  farthing  they  owed — that  is  to  say,  indefinitely— 
and  their  children  after  them  were  bound  in  the  same  way 
in  the  quality  of  responsible  heirs. 

It  may  be  thought  that  here,  at  any  rate,  was  a  staff  of 
labourers  attached  to  the  soil  and  bound  to  a  master.  But 
it  was  not  so  at  all. 

Taxes  had  become  so  heavy  under  the  empire,  which  was 
plundered  by  the  emperors  far  more  than  by  the  barbarians, 
that  the  landowners  preferred  to  abandon  their  property 
and  the  cultivators  to  stop  farming,  rather  than  be  responsible 
to  the  Treasury  for  the  taxes  of  the  estate. 

The  emperors  thought  of  an  expedient :  they  made  some 
of  the  barbarians,  who  were  always  to  be  found  on  the  frontiers 
asking  for  lands  within  the  empire,  into  cultivators.  Barbarians 
were  transported  by  thousands  into  the  interior  of  the  empire, 
and  were  established  either  on  the  lands  which  the  emperor 
was  obliged  to  keep  for  himself,  for  want  of  persons  who  would 
cultivate  them  of  their  own  free  will,  or  on  the  lands  of  private 
men  who  had  applied  for  cultivators  to  the  "  official  employ- 
ment bureau."  (That  phrase  is  rendered  literally.)  The 
imperial  administration  did  not  reduce  the  barbarians  to 
slavery  because,  in  that  case,  they  would  merely  have  been 
under  masters  who  were  responsible  for  them,  and  the  Treasury 
would  have  had  nothing  to  do  with  them  directly  :  the  Treasury 
wanted  cultivators  who  were  nominally  free,  and  would  be 
personally  responsible  for  the  payment  of  the  dues  levied 
on  the  harvests  they  reaped. 

The  results  of  such  an  arrangement  can  be  guessed  from 
the  motives  which  inspired  it.  In  a  word,  the  cultivator 


THE  FRANK  137 

found  that  the  Treasury  appropriated  all  the  results  of  his  work. 
His  rent  probably  amounted  to  only  a  tithe  of  his  harvests. 
We  must  conclude,  from  the  small  amount  of  rent  he  was  bound 
to  pay  to  the  landowner,  that  he  could  not  have  kept  much 
of  the  produce  of  his  labour  for  himself,  and  that  the  Treasury 
swallowed  up  almost  all  of  it.  Under  those  conditions,  the 
settler  had  no  ambition  to  remain  what  he  was,  whether  he 
happened  to  be  a  barbarian  or  a  Roman  cultivator.  Nor 
was  the  landowner  more  anxious  to  keep  him,  for  he  was 
ultimately  responsible  to  the  Treasury  for  the  cultivator ;  it 
was  better  to  leave  the  land  uncultivated  and  say  to  the  Trea- 
sury, "  Take  it,  if  you  want  to." 

The  introduction  of  barbarian  cultivators,  then,  missed 
fire  :  the  Treasury  again  found  empty  lands  staring  it  in  the 
face. 

The  emperors  took  a  step  further  :  they  forbade  the  land- 
owners to  dismiss  their  cultivators  ;  they  were  obliged  at  the 
same  time  to  forbid  them  to  alter  their  contracts  with  the 
cultivators  ;  and  to  complete  the  step,  the  cultivators  also 
were  forbidden  to  give  up  agriculture. 

In  this  way,  agriculture  was  made  obligatory,  and  the  culti- 
vator was  fixed  to  the  land.  So  much  for  indirect  cultivation. 

Of  course  the  landowner  did  not  take  an  atom  of  interest 
in  it.  How  could  that  be  expected  ?  He  had  absolutely 
nothing  to  do  with  it,  and  no  right  to  make  any  changes.  It 
was  the  Treasury  (the  only  party  interested)  which  took  direct 
charge  of  the  registration  of  the  amount  of  each  tenure,  of 
the  name  of  the  cultivator,  of  the  rent  due  to  the  landowner ; 
it  was  the  Treasury  which  kept  direct  watch  over  the  tenure 
to  see  that  it  was  not  abandoned,  and  that  it  was  handed 
on  to  the  cultivator's  heirs. 

In  order  to  accomplish  this,  the  Treasury,  when  on  circuit, 
summoned  the  cultivators  of  each  estate  to  appear  before  it. 
Salvien  tells  us  that  he  absolutely  blushed  to  describe  those 
odious  interferences  of  the  Treasury. 

This,  then,  was  "  indirect  cultivation "  :  the  Treasury 
took  the  place  of  the  landowner  altogether,  the  cultivators 
were  robbed  of  their  harvests  by  the  Treasury,  and  were  only 
kept  on  the  land  by  force,  by  public  constraint.  In  this  case, 
too,  a  staff  of  farm  labourers  could  scarcely  be  expected  to 


138  THE  FRANK 

have  any  strong  bond  of  union  with  the  master  or  with  the 
estate. 

To  complete  the  picture  of  the  Roman  estate,  we  must 
add  that  some  slaves  were  placed  upon  the  same  footing  as 
the  cultivators,  except  in  so  far  as  they  were  not  freemen — 
a  scarcely  appreciable  difference.  They  were  called  servi 
casati,  because  they  had  a  separate  tenure,  a  hut  to  themselves, 
like  the  cultivators  ;  or  servi  adscripticii,  because  they  were 
individually  registered  with  their  tenure  by  the  Treasury ; 
or  else  servi  colonarii,  because  they  shared  these  privileges 
with  the  cultivators  (coloni).  But  this  does  not  add  to  or 
detract  from  the  idea  of  indirect  cultivation  we  have  just  given. 

All  the  documents  of  the  times  before  the  Frankish  invasion, 
and  the  edicts  of  the  emperors  of  even  a  later  date  who  ruled 
outside  Frankish  territory,  show  that  the  Roman  estate  was 
such  as  we  have  described. 

Let  us  now  see  how  estates  in  the  hands  of  Franks  were 
managed  after  the  Frankish  invasion. 

The  first  thing  the  Frankish  emigrant  did  on  his  estate 
was  characteristic  and  absolutely  original.  He  used  one 
part  of  his  land  to  serve  the  other  :  one  was  the  "  land  of 
service,"  the  other  the  "  land  of  mastership." 

M.  Fustel  de  Coulanges  says  :  "  But  the  Romans  had  actu- 
ally divided  their  estates  into  two  parts  before  this  :  one  which 
they  worked  directly  through  the  familia  of  slaves  and  the 
slave  milieus ;  and  the  other  which  they  worked  indirectly 
through  the  cultivators,  or  the  servile  cultivators."  He  does 
not  grasp  that,  if  one  part  was  cultivated  directly  and  the 
other  indirectly,  they  could  never  have  been  anything  else 
than  entirely  separate  parts,  and  could  never  have  formed 
an  organised  whole,  in  which  the  people  who  occupied  and 
found  their  living  on  one  part  also  cultivated  the  other.  Yet 
it  is  as  clear  as  daylight.  The  point  is,  not  that  the  Frank 
divided  his  estate  into  two  parts,  but  that  he  used  those  parts 
in  a  particular  way. 

Where  did  the  Frank  get  the  idea  of  using  one  part  of  his 
land  to  serve  the  other  ?  It  came  to  him  with  his  own  tra- 
ditions. The  solitary  Gothic  emigrant  was  a  man  who  had 
seen  all  his  own  personal  ties  broken.  He  had  fallen  back  on 
the  possession,  the  freest  and  most  absolute  possession,  of  an 


THE  FRANK  139 

estate  of  his  own.  In  it  were  all  his  resources.  When  he 
wished  to  make  one  of  his  adult  sons  definitely  his  partner, 
what  course  did  he  pursue  ?  He  granted  him  his  estate  on 
condition  that  he  supplied  his  father,  mother,  brothers,  or 
sisters  with  certain  things.  That  was  the  accepted  procedure. 
No  other  was  possible.  When  at  length  he  went  south  to  the 
Saxon  plain,  he  found  people  there  who  were  suitable  for  slaves. 
Did  he  use  them  as  his  personal  servants  ?  No,  he  did  not 
even  use  them  for  his  personal  service,  which  he  was  content 
to  have  done,  says  Tacitus,  "  by  his  wife  and  by  his  children 
of  tender  age."  l  Did  he  form  them  into  gangs  to  work  under 
a  villicus  ?  No  ;  he  allotted  to  each  of  them  a  plot  of  land,  and 
laid  upon  him,  as  his  duty,  not  to  serve  him  as  master,  but  to 
serve  a  portion  of  the  estate  of  which  his  plot  was  a  part.  Thus 
he  proceeded  in  the  same  way  in  the  settlement  of  his  slave 
as  in  the  settlement  of  his  associated  heir  :  he  granted  him 
land  and  exacted  services  which  were  connected  with  the  land, 
incorporated,  as  it  were,  in  the  possession  of  the  soil,  and  which 
could  no  more  be  shifted  than  the  land  itself,  and  were  trans- 
mitted with  it.  This  system,  then,  which  bound  the  man  to 
the  soil,  was  adopted  by  the  particularist  family,  and  took  the 
place  of  the  patriarchal  system,  by  which  man  was  bound  to 
man.  It  was  that  method,  and  none  other,  that  the  Frankish 
emigrant  continued  to  employ  in  the  rich  lands  of  Gaul  and  of 
the  Rhenish  basin.  He  applied  it  first  to  the  serfs,  the  slaves, 
his  fellow-workers — afterwards  to  the  freemen,  his  fellow- 
workers,  as  will  appear  later — in  the  same  way  as  he  formerly 
applied  it  to  his  slaves  in  the  Saxon  plain,  even  in  the  time  of 
Tacitus,  and  from  the  very  beginning,  actually  on  the  shores 
of  the  North  Sea,  to  his  free  associated  heir.  The  "  land  of 
mastership  "  and  the  "  land  of  service  "  are  not  creations,  but 
institutions,  introduced  by  the  Frankish  emigrant,  at  any  rate 
as  regards  their  fundamental  idea,  from  the  lands  his  ancestors 
inhabited. 

Besides  the  sequence  of  facts  which  I  have  just  set  forth, 
and  the  hiatus  between  this  organisation  and  that  of  the  Romans, 
which  I  described  a  few  pages  back,  there  are  two  things  that 
prove  the  origin  of  the  above  system  : 

1.  The  Franks  were  the  only  people  that  had  a  name  for  this 
1  Gcrmania,  xxv. 


140  THE  FRANK 

organisation,  mansus  dominicatus,  the  dominating  estate ; 
mansi  serviles  sen  aspicientes,  the  servile  estates,  or  those  that 
"  look  up  to  "  another  as  if  to  obey  it.  There  is  nothing 
of  that  sort  found  among  the  Romans  till  well  into  the  fifth 
century. 

2.  It  is  not  merely  the  name  that  is  new,  but  the  thing  itself. 
"  The  division  "  (division  is  not  exactly  the  right  word)  "  of  the 
estate  into  two  parts  became  general  at  that  time,"  says  M. 
Fustel  de  Coulanges.  It  is  certainly  true  that  it  was  general, 
but  as  regards  the  statement  that  it  became  general  at  that  time, 
he  ought  to  have  shown  that  it  existed  before  ;  whereas,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  it  was  not  introduced  till  then,  and  immediately, 
or  very  soon,  became  general. 

But,  to  continue  :  mansus  dominicatus,  an  expression  that 
appeared  only  at  that  time,  is  merely  a  translation  ;  the  original 
name,  the  correct  one,  is  found  in  the  charters  of  the  north  and 
east  (as  M.  Fustel  confesses) — that  is  to  say,  in  Austrasia,  the 
land  that  is  most  thoroughly  Frankish  ;  the  correct  name 
designating  the  master-estate  is  sola  (or  terra  saiica).  The 
mansus  dominicatus  is  simply  the  salle,  the  liall,  the  manor 
house  with  a  great  central  hall,  an  importation  from  the  Saxon 
plain,  the  master-house,  and  with  it  the  salic  land,  which 
depends  on  it,  the  land  belonging  to  the  hall.  And  the  mansi 
serviles  seu  aspicientes  ;  what  were  they  called  ?  CascB,  small 
dwellings,  huts ;  or  else  hobo?,  hofe.  Even  M.  Fustel  de 
Coulanges  does  not  overlook  the  truth  of  this  fact,  for  he  supports 
the  view  of  the  professors  of  the  ficole  des  Chartes  in  declar- 
ing that  the  Franks  were  called  Saliens  because  of  this  institution 
of  the  sola  and  the  terra  saiica,  because  of  the  peculiar  organi- 
sation of  their  estate  therein  implied  ;  and  the  name  of  Saliens 
is  accepted  as  having  been  applied  generally  to  all  the  Franks. 

But  the  facts  of  social  life  have  more  weight  than  all  the 
utterances  of  learned  men.  Now,  a  very  short  time  after  the 
settlement  of  the  Franks,  the  two  widespread  institutions  of 
the  families  of  slaves,  and  the  cultivators  who  were  permanently 
attached  to  estates  by  the  Treasury,  disappeared  from  all  parts. 
And  what  took  their  place  ?  The  Saxon  system  of  slavery  as 
described  by  Tacitus.  There  were  no  more  familice  nor  culti- 
vators after  the  Roman  style  ;  but,  instead,  Saxon  slaves  pure 
and  simple,  or  a  few  remaining  cultivators,  "  who  had  become 


THE  FRANK  141 

exactly  like  "  the  slaves,  as  M.  Fustel  expressly  states.  It  was 
serfdom,  in  fact. 

It  was  so  very  much,  like  the  Saxon  system  of  slavery  that 
M.  Fustel  is  again  obliged  to  notice  a  new  feature,  unheard  of 
among  the  Romans  but  remarked  by  Tacitus  when  he  was 
in  Germany :  the  slave's  wife  and  children  did  not  work  for 
the  master  !  They  worked  for  their  husband  and  father  ; 
even  the  grown-up  sons  worked  on  the  plot  of  land  belonging 
to  their  father,  until  the  master  made  an  agreement  with  them 
to  grant  them  some  land  of  their  own. 

Thus  that  kind  of  serfdom,  that  organisation  of  the  estate 
which  consisted  in  giving  up  one  part  of  it  in  order  that  another 
part  of  it  might  be  worked,  a  short  time  after  the  Frankish 
invasion  completely  took  the  place  of  the  twofold  system  of 
the  families  of  slaves  and  the  establishments  of  cultivators.  Is 
this  clear  ? 

To  clench  the  matter  further,  observe  the  new,  absolutely 
typical  meaning  of  the  term  mansus  servilis  in  the  new  organi- 
sation. It  was  no  longer  a  plot  of  land  held  by  a  slave,  but  a 
plot  of  land  which,  as  it  were,  owed  slave  service,  so  that  no 
matter  who  held  it,  whether  he  were  a  freeman  or  even  an 
ecclesiastic,  the  holding  was  accountable  for  slave  service  on 
the  estate.  It  was  the  business  of  the  man  who  had  the  holding 
to  get  the  work  done  at  his  own  expense,  if  he  thought  it  beneath 
him  or  outside  his  range  to  do  the  work  himself. 

The  immediate  and  immanent  consequence  of  the  Frankish 
system  was  that  certain  services  to  be  rendered  on  the  estate, 
apart  from  the  plot  of  land,  were  exacted  in  return  for  every 
plot  of  land  that  was  conceded.  This  arrangement,  which  did 
away  with  the  necessity  of  having  the  familice  of  slaves,  de- 
manded an  entire  change  in  the  cultivator's  agreement ;  for  he 
had  hitherto  been  obliged,  like  an  ordinary  farmer,  to  hand 
over  to  his  master  a  portion  of  the  produce  of  his  holding,  in 
money  or  in  kind,  a  fixed  portion,  or  one  proportioned  to  his 
harvest.  The  object  of  the  Frankish  holding  was  not  to  supply 
produce  raised  on  the  holding  itself — that  produce,  except  for 
very  small  dues,  was  entirely  given  over  to  the  tenant  as  his 
own  property — the  object  of  the  Frankish  holding  was  to  con- 
tribute a  certain  amount  of  labour  to  the  "  land  of  mastership." 
If  we  are  in  the  right,  we  must,  therefore,  expect  to  see  a  revo- 


142  THE  FRANK 

lution  in  the  condition  of  the  cultivators,  in  the  terms  of  their 
agreements  with  their  masters  from  the  time  of  the  Frankish 
invasion.  Now  such  a  revolution  did  actually  take  place. 
The  cultivators,  as  I  have  just  said,  were  previously  only  farmers, 
they  were  not  liable  to  forced  labour.  In  all  parts  they  very 
soon  became  liable  to  forced  labour,  like  the  serfs.  They  only 
differed  from  freemen  in  name,  and  such  a  difference  was 
hardly  appreciable. 

This  revolution  is  all  the  more  striking  because  from  the 
second  to  the  sixth  century  there  was  a  memorable  series  of 
imperial  edicts,  which  secured  the  absolute  immutability  of  the 
ancient  agreements  made  with  cultivators.  Now,  before  the  sixth 
century,  before  the  Franks,  there  is  no  mention  in  any  document 
of  any  work,  under  the  name  of  forced  labour,  being  demanded 
of  the  cultivator  other  than  what  was  still  entered  a  few  years 
ago  in  the  leases  of  the  Normandy  farmers,  and  is  still  executed 
by  neighbours  when  they  "  do  each  other  a  good  turn  " — that 
is  to  say,  when  they  give  each  other  a  hand  on  occasions  when 
work  has  to  be  done  that  requires  a  large  number  of  persons 
at  one  time.  According  to  the  only  statements  that  can  be 
produced,  the  cultivator  was,  to  be  precise,  bound  to  give 
"  two  days'  tillage,  two  days'  weeding,  two  days'  harvesting  in 
the  year  " — six  days  in  all  per  annum  !  But  no  sooner  had 
the  Franks  arrived  than  the  situation  was  entirely  changed. 
Let  us  hear  what  M.  Fustel  de  Coulanges  has  to  say  : 

"  At  that  time,"  he  says,  "  the  principle  that  appeared  to 
dominate  everything  was  that  the  land  of  the  proprietor  was 
to  be  cultivated  :  this  cultivation  formed  the  principal  part " 
(what  a  change  !)  "  of  the  so-called  rent  paid  by  the  cultivators. 
Sometimes  the  extent  of  land  that  each  one  had  to  cultivate, 
or  the  number  of  days  he  was  to  work,  was  fixed  beforehand ; 
sometimes  it  was  indeterminate  "  (that  was  an  absolutely  new 
arrangement).  "  One  man  owed  one  day'swork  (a  week),  another 
two,  another  three  (per  week)."  (That  is  to  say,  a  hundred  and 
fifty-six  per  annum  instead  of  six  !)  "  Many  cultivators  "  (and 
this  is  extremely  important)  "  had  to  contribute  forced  labour, 
manual  labour,  carting,  wood-cutting,  up  to  any  amount  desired. 
The  arbitrary  will  of  the  master — or,  more  correctly,  the  needs 
of  the  estate — decided  the  extent  of  their  obligations." 

There  you  have  a  very  lucid  description  bringing  out  the 


THE  FRANK  143 

main  points  of  the  absolutely  unique  organisation  of  the  Frankish 
estate.  It  forms  a  great  contrast  to  the  previous  system, 
and  upsets  it  on  every  point,  even  with  regard  to  the  cultivators, 
who  seem  to  be  the  least  changed  part  of  it.  It  is  an  entirely 
original  institution,  and  irreconcilable  with  its  predecessors. 
Now  let  us  briefly  examine  the  results  : 

1.  The  staff  of  the  estate  is  strongly  bound  to  the  soil. 
I  am  not  here  speaking  of  the  obligation  which  binds  it.     The 
cultivator  was  also  bound  by  an  obligation  :    he  was  bound 
by  the  arrears  of  debt  which  he  owed  the  landowner,  and  later 
by  the  compulsion  exerted  by  the  fiscus,  and  by  the  edicts 
of  the  emperors.     But  that  is  not  the  sort  of  bond  to  which 
a  man  holds. 

The  serf,  on  the  contrary,  was  bound  by  the  concession  of 
a  dwelling  and  a  piece  of  land  with  full  rights  of  use.  There  he 
was  his  own  master,  master  of  his  family,  of  his  work  and 
of  its  produce  :  there  was  no  landowner,  no  fiscus  to  plunder 
him.  The  dues  which  the  serf  had  to  pay  in  kind,  were,  as 
I  have  said,  insignificant :  a  few  chickens,  a  little  honey,  etc., 
small  things  which  the  master  did  not  want  to  produce 
on  a  large  scale  himself.  A  man  in  that  kind  of  situation 
would  readily  and  naturally  become  attached  to  the  soil. 

It  will  not  be  out  of  place  to  mention  here  that  the  serf's 
mansus  in  every  case  embraced  all  that  was  necessary  to  life  : 
a  field  for  cereals  and  textile  plants,  a  meadow  for  serviceable 
animals,  a  vineyard  to  provide  drink,  wood  for  cutting  when 
it  was  needed  ;  and  last,  but  not  least,  the  house  with  its  closed 
courtyard.1 

2.  The  staff  of  the  estate  was  strongly  attached  to  the 
master  :    each  serf  came  to  work  under  the  master's  orders 
three  days  a  week  at  least.     Such  close  contact  with  the  master 
would,  I  think,  have  had  a  powerful  influence  upon  the  men. 
Observe  that  in  the  ordering  of  the  estate  it  was  only  a  very 
small,  infinitely  small  part  of  the  forced  labour  that  was  definitely 
set  apart  beforehand  for  special  tasks,  as,  for  instance,  the 
"  dressing  of  a  vineyard  of   a  certain  area."     The  far  larger 
portion  of  forced  labour  consisted  of  so  many  days'  work  at 
any  job  the  master,  might  determine.     This  was  the  indisput- 
able mark  of  the  care  which  the  master  meant  to  give  to  agri- 

- l  See  the  Polyptiques. 


144  THE  FRANK 

culture.  When  a  man's  chief  care  is,  not  to  direct  the  work 
himself,  but  to  receive  the  products  of  labour  at  his  ease,  he 
does  not  himself  undertake  to  direct  the  whole  staff  of  the 
estate  and  portion  out  its  work.  Look  at  the  people  nowadays 
who  employ  farmers  :  they  do  so  in  order  to  have  none  of  the 
cares  that  the  work  brings.  The  Frank  acted  in  just  the 
opposite  way  :  he  suppressed  farmers,  cultivators  who  paid 
rent.  He  was  actuated  by  quite  opposite  feelings. 

The  Frank  had  good  reason  to  prefer  forced  labour  which 
could  be  directed  to  whatever  purpose  he  liked  :  it  was  no 
longer  a  question,  as  in  the  Saxon  plain,  of  keeping  a  small 
estate  with  the  limited  productive  powers  common  to  a  poor 
soil  in  a  good  productive  condition  ;  it  was  a  question  of 
clearing  immense  wide  domains  and  of  bringing  new  rich  lands 
under  cultivation.  Such  a  thing  could  not  be  accomplished 
unless  the  labour  was  entirely  at  the  master's  disposal. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  Austrasia  in  particular,  the 
favourite  land  of  the  Franks,  had  been  very  little  cleared  in 
the  time  of  the  Romans.  They  had  not  extended  the  vigour 
of  their  influence  as  far  as  that,  and  the  incessant  dread  of 
German  invasions  had  prevented  the  country  from  prospering 
and  from  being  peopled.  Those  immense  German  forests 
which  the  wars  of  the  Roman  Empire  made  famous,  stretched 
all  over  the  region  of  which  we  are  speaking. 

The  Franks  were  responsible  for  the  clearing  of  Austrasia. 

The  personal  supervision  of  the  master  two  or  three  days 
a  week  had  a  completer  influence  because,  as  Tacitus  notes, 
he  treated  his  slaves  kindly,  a  fact  which  is  further  proved 
by  Frankish  history.  The  liberty  he  allowed  them  in  their 
own  homes  and  in  their  own  families,  their  settlement  on  small 
holdings,  which  were  provided  with  everything  and  placed 
entirely  at  their  disposal,  are  all  evidence  of  kindness  ;  Tacitus 
puts  it  very  explicitly  :  "  Verberare  servum,  ac  vinculis  et 
opere  coercerey  rarum.  Occidere  solent,  non  disciplina  et 
severitate,  sed  impetu  et  ira  ut  inimicum"  1 

But  as  soon  as  the  staff  was  firmly  attached  to  the  estate 
and  to  the  master,  two  dreaded  enemies  made  their  appear- 
ance :  the  future  and  the  outside  world. 

The  Frank  provided  against  them,  a  fact  which  gives  us 
1  Germania,  xxv. 


THE  FRANK  145 

the  explanation  of  two  fresh,  historical  features  of  the  organisa- 
tion of  his  estate. 

1.  The  future  :    the  Frank  always  used  the  same  simple 
means  of  providing  for  it.     He  ceded  his  land  to  an  heir  on 
condition  "  that  he  carried  things  on  as  they  were,  and  kept 
each    man    in    the  same  relation   to  the  land    in  which  bis 
predecessor  had  placed  him."     That  was  the  origin  of  the 
strange  stability  of    the  serfs  —  that   is,  of   the  slaves   who 
appeared  to  have  no  rights  —  and  of  the  curious  fact  that 
masters    could    not    change    the    condition    of   their   slaves. 
There  are  documents  which  prove  it. 

Observe  that  this  stability  was  in  no  way  prejudicial  to 
progress  in  agriculture,  since  with  the  great  majority  of  slaves 
forced  labour  took  the  form  of  a  certain  number  of  days'  work, 
and  the  number  of  days  was  often  indeterminate,  and  the 
master  was  at  liberty  to  turn  his  serf  to  whatever  work  he 
thought  best. 

2.  The   outside   world :     we    saw   that   the   Merovingians 
did  not  hesitate  to  commovere  exercitum,  to  get  the  counts 
to  proclaim  the  king's  summons  to  arms,  and  to  levy  all  the 
men,  or  at  least  a  good  number,  in  order  to  go  to  war.     Into 
what  disorder  the  excellent  organisation  of  the  estate  must 
have  been  thrown  by  these  levies  !     As  a  matter  of  fact,  it 
was  not  so ;    the  Frank  had  provided  against  it.     The  only 
men  who  could  be  required  for  military  service  were  freemen, 
cultivators.     The    Franks    had   rapidly  converted   the    culti- 
vators into  serfs :    they  were  not  content  merely  to  put  them 
on  the  same  footing  as  the  serfs  by  making  them   contribute 
forced  labour,  as  we  have  said  :    the  colonatus  (i.e.  the  status 
of  a  colonus  or  cultivator),  which  signified  a  status  of  liberty, 
soon    completely    disappeared.     That   is    the    explanation    of 
this  otherwise  inexplicable  phenomenon  :    namely,   the  sub- 
stitution of  serfdom  for  the  colonatus,  in  spite  of  Christian 
ideas  about  enfranchisement. 

Picture  to  yourself  a  staff  of  labourers,  firmly  bound  to 
the  estate,  accustomed  to  the  constant  supervision  of  their 
master,  fixed  to  the  spot  for  generations,  and  secure  against 
the  attempts  of  the  counts  to  enlist  them  in  the  army.  Then 
tell  me  if  the  master  had  not  on  the  spot  an  army  sufficiently 
strong,  sufficiently  under  his  control  and  attached  to  his  cause 
10 


146  THE  FRANK 

to  defend  his  estate  and  forbid  the  entrance  of  anyone  he 
did  not  wish  to  see  ?  Can  you  not  now  understand  the  reason 
for  those  warrants  of  immunity  which  rained  from  the  hands 
of  the  Merovingians,  forbidding  the  counts  to  meddle  with 
any  living  thing  on  the  estate,  or  interfere  with  anything 
that  might  go  on  there  ?  Were  not  the  master  and  servants 
sufficiently  in  harmony  and  sufficiently  bound  to  one  another 
to  defend  the  domain  ?  Would  it  be  productive  of  good-will 
to  enter  it  in  spite  of  them  ? 

And  who  was  it  who  had  won  so  much  freedom  for  the 
estate  ?  The  Frank,  with  the  absolutely  original  system 
of  management  which  he  had  brought  with  him  from  the 
land  of  his  fathers. 

Now  that  we  have  begun  to  feel  reassured  as  to  the  fate 
of  the  Franki sh  emigrant  and  his  estate,  we  will  pause  for 
the  present :  we  can  breathe  freely. 

We  now  have  to  fear  for  the  count  and  the  Merovingian. 
In  fact,  it  remains  for  us  to  see  how  it  was  that  the  Frank 
managed  to  increase  the  importance  of  the  estate  so  much 
that  the  count  and  the  Merovingian  king  were  destroyed, 
and  replaced  by  the  owner  of  the  estate. 

Let  us  not  be  disturbed  by  the  idea  that  at  any  rate  our 
landowner,  in  the  quality  of  a  freeman,  was  required  for  war 
and  dragged  far  away  from  his  estate  by  an  enforced  military 
career.  We  have  already  said,  upon  the  evidence  of  history, 
that  he  knew  very  well,  if  he  remained  at  home  and  was  liable 
to  a  penalty,  how  to  a.void  paying  it;  we  have  just  seen  how 
he  used  to  stop  the  count  at  the  entrance  to  his  estate  when 
he  came  to  collect  fines. 

We  shall  see  this  more  clearly  in  the  next  chapter. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  FRANK 

PART  IV 

THE  basis  of  the  Frankish  emigrant's  power  lay,  as  we 
have  seen,  in  the  altogether  peculiar  organisation  of  his 
estate.  The  familia  of  slaves  and  the  colonatus  of  the  Romans 
gave  place  to  the  Saxon  system  of  serfdom,  rendered  complete 
by  the  combination  of  the  "  land  of  mastership"  and  the  "  land 
of  service." 

By  this  system  the  working  staff  of  the  estate  was  firmly 
and  genuinely  bound  to  the  domain  and  to  the  master  of  the 
domain ;  the  strength  of  the  Frankish  emigrant  lay  in  his  domain 
and  in  his  ability  to  manage  his  staff. 

Before  going  further,  let  us  observe  the  following  point, 
which  was  characteristic  of  the  domain  belonging  to  a  particu- 
larist  family.  It  was  through  the  estate  that  the  bonds  attach- 
ing its  occupants  to  one  another  were  formed ;  whereas  in  the 
patriarchal  system  the  organisation  of  the  domain  depended 
on  the  bonds  established  directly  between  its  occupants. 

In  fact,  the  only  direct  bonds  preserved  between  persons 
in  the  system  of  independence  practised  by  the  particularist 
family  were  the  following  : 

1.  The  bond  between  husband  and  wife.     The  fact  that  the 
husband  was  absolutely  free  to  choose  his  wife  solely  for  her 
personal  merits,  strengthened  the  bond  between  them. 

2.  The  bonds  between  the  parents  and  their  young  children. 
These  were  assured  by  the  natural  dependence  of  the  children 
and  by  the  stern  warning  conveyed  to  them  in  conversation 
and  in  everyday  occurrences  that  they  must  draw  as  much 
advantage  as  they  could  from  their  education,  so  that  when 
they  were  grown  up  they  might  not  succumb  beneath  the  pressure 

147 


148  THE  FRANK 

of  necessity,  and  might  be  able  to  extricate  themselves  from 
difficulties. 

As  for  bonds  between  adults,  there  were  no  direct  bonds, 
except  those  of  marriage.  There  certainly  were  voluntary 
associations,  but  they  were  restricted  to  special  objects,  and 
were  only  temporary. 

With  these  exceptions,  the  adult  had  no  firm  and  sure 
bond  of  union,  except  with  the  land.  So  much  for  the  manner 
of  life  of  the  particularist  family  and  the  nature  of  its 
estate. 

In  the  previous  chapter  we  noted  the  superior  strength  of 
the  bonds  formed  between  persons  through  the  estate.  But 
however  great  the  power  of  the  Frankish  emigrant  may  have 
been  on  his  own  estate,  he  was  inferior  in  one  respect  to  the 
Merovingian  truste  :  his  resources  were  limited  to  what  the 
estate  could  furnish,  both  as  to  the  number  of  men  and  the 
amount  of  produce.  The  supply  was  certain,  but  small. 

The  Merovingian  truste  was  fundamentally  weak,  because 
it  depended  on  purely  personal  ties  ;  on  the  other  hand,  we  have 
seen  the  great  extent  of  its  resources  :  its  staff  of  officers  was 
unlimited,  its  kingdom  was  immense,  and  continued  to  be  en- 
larged. In  the  presence  of  an  adverse  power  such  as  that, 
the  emigrant  was  obliged  to  have  a  stronger  guarantee  of  his 
independence  than  he  had  in  the  Saxon  plain.  The  domain, 
with  its  Saxon  organisation,  formed  only  the  first  foundation, 
as  it  were,  of  the  bulwark  of  his  independence.  More  had  to 
be  added,  as  we  shall  see. 

Nothing  but  a  coalition  of  landowners,  it  seems,  could  have 
really  guaranteed  the  independence  of  the  estates  in  face  of 
the  extensive  power  of  the  truste.  But  if  that  coalition 
had  been  founded  on  the  same  basis  as  the  truste — that  is, 
on  the  direct  association  of  persons — it  would  have  run  exactly 
the  same  risks  as  the  truste.  That  is  what  actually  occurred. 
At  every  opportunity,  under  the  rule  of  the  Merovingians,  the 
inhabitants  of  a  pagus,  of  a  larger  area,  or  even  of  one  of  the 
Frankish  kingdoms,  with  the  richest  landowners  at  their  head, 
declared  in  a  body  for  one  party  or  another,  supported  one 
candidate  for  power  or  another,  voted  for  one  war  and  opposed 
another,  took  vengeance  for  one  tax  that  had  been  levied  and 
refused  to  pay  another  ;  but  such  leagues  were  dissolved  as 


THE  FRANK  149 

easily  as  they  were  formed  ;  they  had  no  stronger  bond  of  union 
than  that  of  a  clan. 

Therefore  the  coalition  of  the  Frankish  landowners  was  not 
based  on  the  principle  of  personal  ties.  It  was  based,  like  the 
first  Frankish  institutions,  on  rights  over  land.  And  its  might 
was  irresistible. 

We  must  now  watch  the  development  of  the  curious  move- 
ment by  which  the  social  system  brought  from  the  shores  of 
the  North  Sea,  and  based  on  the  self-sufficiency  of  each  individual 
on  his  estate,  revealed  its  full  strength,  and  completely  took 
the  place  of  the  social  systems  hitherto  known  in  the  west. 

The  rich  lands  of  Gaul  and  of  the  Rhenish  basin  enabled 
the  truste  to  expand  to  a  far  greater  degree  than  it  would 
have  been  able  to  do  on  the  barren  lands  of  the  Saxon  plain  ; 
but  it  must  also  be  said  that  those  same  rich  lands  brought 
about  a  considerable  change  in  the  domain  of  the  private  man. 
The  barrenness  of  the  soil,  the  small  amount  of  help  rendered 
by  the  family,  the  exiguity  of  the  land,  had  made  it  essential 
to  have  only  small  estates  in  the  Saxon  plain ;  whereas  the 
richness  of  the  soil,  the  abundance  of  booty,  the  advantage  of 
being  able  to  occupy  lucrative  posts  for  a  time,  the  immense 
extent  of  territory  opened  for  the  particularist  family  by  the 
expeditions  of  Frankish  bands  or  Merovingian  armies,  made  it 
easy  for  the  emigrant  Frank  to  have  a  large  estate.  That  is 
where  the  new  element  comes  in. 

We  have  already  seen  the  characteristic  manner  in  which 
the  influence  of  the  large  estate  made  itself  felt.  If  Tacitus 
can  be  trusted,  we  must  believe  that  the  serf's  task  consisted 
in  contributing  a  certain  quantity  of  produce :  "  modum 
frumenti,  aut  pecoris,  aut  vestis,  dominus,  ut  colono,  injungit, 
et  servus  Jiactenus  paret"  l  ("  The  master  settles,  as  he  would 
with  a  colonus,  the  quantity  of  corn  or  cattle  or  material  for 
clothing  to  be  supplied  :  the  serf's  task  is  limited  to  that "). 
This  system  of  the  regulation  of  work  naturally  sprang  from  the 
small  estate,  where  the  amount  of  the  produce  was  stationary  ; 
but  in  the  time  of  the  Merovingians  there  appears  in  the  so- 
called  Polyptiques — that  is,  the  collections  of  deeds  relating  to 
property — side  by  side  with  the  institution  of  the  "land  of  master- 
ship and  of  service,"  a  system  of  forced  labour  —  no  longer 
1  Qermania,  xxv. 


150  THE  FRANK 

under  the  form  of  contributions  of  produce — which  was  imitated 
from  the  Saxon  system  of  job-work.  Such  and  such  a  servile 
mansus,  for  instance,  was  responsible  for  the  "  dressing  of  an 
acre  or  so  of  vineyard."  That  system,  however,  was  also  only 
suitable  for  a  form  of  agriculture  which  produced  a  stationary 
amount.  But  it  was  an  advance  towards  a  greater  modification. 

Side  by  side  with  this  kind  of  forced  labour  there  was 
another  kind,  which  is  entered  in  the  account  of  the  above 
mansus,  and  it  shows  the  transformation  which  the  large 
estate  and  high  farming  brought  about  in  the  Frankish  system. 
"  This  same  mansus"  it  is  said,  "  is  responsible  for  three  days* 
work  a  week."  The  three  days  evidently  formed  the  greater 
part  of  the  work,  and  reveal  a  system  by  which  work  was 
calculated  not  by  the  amount  of  the  contributions  of  produce, 
nor  by  the  piece,  but  by  the  day.  The  reason  is  that  as  the 
estate  grew  larger  there  were  fresh  demands  for  labour  and 
for  an  indefinite  amount  of  it,  for  it  could  no  longer  be  deter- 
mined by  a  fixed  object.  When  fresh  land  is  constantly  being 
cleared  and  the  soil  is  being  worked  on  a  large  scale,  there 
are  numberless  improvements  to  be  carried  out  apart  from 
the  incessant  turning  over  of  the  earth.  Under  such  conditions 
it  would  have  been  impossible  to  guarantee  constant  employ- 
ment to  a  serf  except  by  determining  the  time  he  was  to  work  ; 
that  was  the  direction  taken  by  the  large  landowners,  as  appears 
from  the  deeds  of  settlement,  of  donation,  or  of  transmission 
of  their  estates. 

Another  immediate  result  of  the  transition  from  the  small 
estate  to  the  large,  from  small  farming  to  high  farming,  was 
the  development  of  opportunities  among  the  capable  Frankish 
emigrants  of  giving  employment.  The  choice  of  trades  was 
likely  to  become  immense.  The  diversity  of  occupations 
continued  to  increase  and  multiply.  Thus  Franks  were  found 
in  the  most  different  and  opposite  conditions  of  fortune.  Some 
were  as  rich  in  lands  as  princes  :  others  were  so  poor  that  they 
were  forced  to  become  serfs.  Historians  are  astonished  to 
find  this  phenomenon  among  a  conquering  and  dominating 
race,  or  else  they  misunderstand  it ;  but  there  is  nothing 
unnatural  about  it. 

The  shrewdest  of  the  Franks,  then,  were  able  to  make 
splendid  estates  for  themselves  in  a  very  short  time. 


THE  FRANK  151 

But  development  of  land  on  a  large  scale  cannot  be  managed 
by  a  single  man  !  He  must  have  helpers. 

As  the  Franks  did  not  accept  the  idea  of  a  milieus  or  slave 
superintendent,  nor  of  the  detestable  gangs  of  freed-men, 
they  did  not  think  of  looking  for  their  assistant-managers 
except  in  the  class  of  freemen.  These  freemen  were  the  same 
as  those  we  came  across  on  the  estate  in  studying  the  warrants 
of  immunity  forbidding  the  counts  to  interfere  either  with 
the  serfs  of  the  estate  or  with  the  freemen  who  lived  on  the 
estate. 

These  freemen  evidently  occupied  a  new  and  unwonted 
position  among  the  people  from  the  Saxon  plain.  They  were 
freemen  who  were  strangers  to  the  landowner's  family  and 
had  no  estate  of  their  own.  Therefore  it  is  not  strange  that 
the  position  of  these  freemen  from  the  time  of  the  arrival 
of  the  Franks  is  not  so  clearly  defined  as  that  of  the  serfs. 
It  is  sketched  out,  but  ill  denned  :  it  can  only  be  made  clear 
by  a  process  of  groping. 

The  apparent  obscurity  of  the  origin  of  the  vassals, 
and  of  everything  connected  with  vassalage,  is  thus  ex- 
plained. 

From  the  very  beginning,  however,  the  name  that  is  used 
by  preference  for  men  in  this  peculiar  position  is  one  from 
which  the  latinised  word  vassus  is  probably  derived  :  they 
are  called  guests,  gasts  in  the  Saxon  tongue.  The  charters 
and  historians  translate  this  Germanic  word  by  ingenui  com- 
manentes,  or  else  by  accolce,  etc.,  all  synonyms  of  guests.  "  On 
each  domain,"  says  M.  Fustel  de  Coulanges,  "there  dwelled 
a  regular  tribe  of  people.  In  the  first  place  there  were  the  serfs, 
either  born  there  or  bought,  etc.  .  .  .  Above  these  categories 
of  men  there  were  usually  some  freemen  on  the  estate,  ingenui, 
who  had  been  established  there  under  the  name  of  inhabitants, 
accolcB,  or  of  guests,  hospites"  (mark  this  well) :  "with  the  use 
of  a  plot  of  land  called  the  hospitium.  Some  were  in  the  position 
of  farmers  of  the  land  (that  is  to  say,  they  paid  a  certain  amount 
of  rent  over  and  above  the  liberal  service  they  rendered  on 
the  estate,  just  as  certain  serfs  paid  a  rent  in  addition  to  their 
forced  labour) ;  others  were  simple  inhabitants,  commanentes 
(that  is  to  say,  they  did  not  pay  rent) ;  but  they  all,  though 
they  entered  the  estate  as  freemen,  were  obliged  to  accept 


152  THE  FRANK 

a  position  of  dependence  with  regard  to  the  landowner,  and 
became  "  his  men."  l 

All  the  following  remarks  are  extremely  important : 

1.  They  became  "  his  men  "  ;    and  in  spite  of  their  title 
of  ingenui  and  franci  which  they  received  on  all  sides,  and 
which  suggested  no  hint  of  hindrance  or  restriction,  it  is  obvious 
that  they  were  not  on  the  estate  for  nothing,  but  were  there 
to  perform  the  services   required  of  freemen.     That  such  was 
the  fact  is  clearly  proved  by  the  manner  in  which  they  are 
always  alluded  to,  and  represented  as  forming  part  of  the 
following   of  the  Dominus   or  Senior,   the   great  landowner. 
That  personage,  indeed,  as  M.  Fustel  de  Coulanges  says,  had 
"  two  groups  of  people  attached  to  him  through  the  estate"  free- 
men, who  were  simply  called   his  men,  and  serf  men,  who 
were    simply    called    his    serfs.     The    following    passage    is 
most  explicit  on  this  subject ;  it  is  from  a  letter  of  immunity  : 
"  Jussimus,  ut  nee  comes,  nee  ullus  judex  publicus,  in  eosdem 
terminos,  ad  homines  ejus,  tarn  ingenuos  quam  servos,  ibidem 
habitantes,   distringendos    ingredi   prcesumat " 2      ("It    is    our 
command  that  no  count  nor  any  public  officer  attempt  to 
enter  the  above-named  property  in  order  to  interfere  with 
his  men  "  (the  men  of  the  lord),  "  whether  freemen  or  serfs,  who 
dwell  therein").     Both  freemen  and  serfs  are   "his  people, 
his  men." 

2.  The  men  who  performed  the  duties  of  freemen  on  the 
estate  had  a  holding  on  the  estate,  a  plot  of  land  which  was 
granted  to  them  and  was  usually  called  hospitium,  guest-land  : 
so  the  same  method  that  was  adopted  for  slaves  began  to  be 
used  for  the  free  servant.     And  this  holding  shows  all  the 
signs  of  having  been  an  institution  in  process  of  formation, 
a  trial  scheme  ;    there  is  nothing  very  fixed  or  definite  about 
it.     It  was  an  institution  that  was  actually  in  use  without 
being    formally   recognised    as    a    right.     Serfdom,    too,    had 
undergone  some  alterations  before  it  became,  as  we  saw,  a 
fixed  and  legally  recognised  thing  owing  to  the  charge  laid 
upon  the  heir  to  allow  the  serfs  to  retain  the  same  relation 
to  the  land  as  they  had  when  they  first  came  there.     The 

ntium  might  be  held  or  not,  at  pleasure.     It  had  to  be  so, 

1  Beauchet,  Organisation  judiciaire  a  I'tpoque  franque,  p.  435, 

2  Ibid.  p.  472, 


THE  FRANK  153 

since,  on  the  one  hand,  the  master  had  to  do  with  a  freeman 
who  could  not  have  constraint  put  upon  him  nor  be  retained 
against  his  will ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  service  expected 
from  him  was  of  such  a  kind  that  it  was  a  difficult  thing  to 
find  out  how  far  a  man  would  continue  to  make  himself  useful, 
show  himself  fit  for  the  post,  and  answer  to  the  requirements. 

The  hospitium,  then,  was  a  grant  of  land  which  he  was 
allowed  to  abandon  if  he  wished  to  free  himself  from  the  services 
which  were  attached  to  it.  The  grant  could  equally  well 
be  withdrawn  by  the  landowner  if  the  man  to  whom  it  was 
granted  did  not  perform  the  services  to  the  master's  liking. 
That  was  the  principle  on  which  it  was  worked.  But  all  sorts 
of  agreements  adapted  to  the  kind  of  people  that  were  dealt 
with,  the  kind  of  services  in  question,  modified  the  hospitium 
to  an  indefinite  extent  as  regards  the  kind  of  land,  the  services 
connected  with  it,  and  the  duration  of  the  grant.  Freemen 
of  all  descriptions  are  entered  in  the  deeds  as  holding  grants 
of  land.  There  were  opportunities  for  such  a  variety  of  men, 
and  so  many  different  kinds  of  service  !  Was  there  not, 
among  others,  the  religious  service,  which  was  secured  to  the 
estate  itself  by  means  of  assignments  of  land  that  were  made 
to  the  chapel  and  to  the  chaplains  ?  These  large  estates 
were  equivalent  to  parishes. 

Rights,  therefore,  and  special  charges  were  attached  to 
each  hospitium.  In  the  deeds  of  donation  or  transmission 
it  is  found  that,  side  by  side  with  the  servile  mansi,  a  quantity 
of  so-called  free-holdings,  ingenuiles,  figure  sometimes  under 
special,  sometimes  under  generic  names,  and  often  have  ap- 
pended the  following  or  analogous  words  as  a  summary:  "Omnia 
tenementa  ad  eundem  fundum  pertinentia"  The  "  guest- 
lands  "  were  handed  over  with  their  "  guests,"  just  as  the 
servile  mansi  were  handed  over  with  their  serfs.  In  such  a 
case  it  remained  with  the  guest  to  decide  whether  he  wished 
to  stay  there  or  not,  and  with  the  new  owner  to  decide  whether 
he  wished  to  keep  his  guest  or  not.  But  the  point  that  is  clear 
is  that  the  contract  made  with  the  previous  landowner  held 
good  and  regulated  the  conditions  under  which  both  parties 
could  separate. 

In  short,  the  conditions  under  which  free-holdings  were 
granted  varied  according  to  the  state  of  the  times,  the  locality, 


154  THE  FRANK 

and  the  importance  of  the  estate.  They  were  probably  clearly 
defined  in  each  individual  case  ;  but  there  was  no  generally 
accepted  form. 

Nevertheless,  the  appellation  of  hospitium  must  be  retained 
as  the  general  name  for  all  varieties  of  free- holdings  : 

1.  Because  it  was  suggested  by  the  Germanic  word  gast 
(guest),  which  is  found  in  connection  with  the  idea  of  serfdom 
from  the  beginning  of  the  Frankish  period  as  designating 
men  who,  though  they  were  quite  free,  yet  took  service  under 
someone,    albeit    on    honourable    terms.      The    term    vassus 
(vassal)  seems  to  have  originally  come  from  the  same  word  gast. 
Thus  from  the  words  themselves  it  is  easy  to  grasp  the  transi- 
tional steps  between  the  tenure  of  land  as  a  hospitium  and 
the  tenure  of  land  under  the  conditions  of  vassalage. 

2.  Because  hospitium  is  the  first  name  employed  in  the 
documents  in  which  different  systems  of  free  tenure  appear. 
It  keeps  up  the  analogy  with  a  Roman  contract.     It  was  quite 
natural  to  compare  the  holding  of  a  gast  with  the  dwelling 
of  a  Roman  hospes,  since  the  terms  and  the  agreements  are 
similar  in  some  ways.     But  the  Roman  hospes  in  no  respect 
played  the  part  of  the  Frankish  gast  in  his  relation  to  the  master 
of   the   estate.     Those   people   must   be   very   simple-minded 
who  fall  into  the  error  of  supposing  that  Frankish  institutions 
bearing   Latin   names   come   from   Roman  institutions.     The 
Latin  tongue  prevailed  as  a  consequence  of  what  took  place 
in  Neustria,  as  we  have  already  seen.     The  Frankish  terms 
had   accordingly   to   be   translated  into   Latin.     New  things 
have   to   be   translated  by  analogies.     But  because   a   word 
is  transferred  from  one  institution  to  an  analogous  institution, 
it  does  not  follow  that  the  two  institutions  form  only  one 
and  spring  from  one  another.     It  is  also  imperative  to  know 
the  difference  of  their  origin  when  the  term  does  not  correspond 
in  its  second  application  with  what  it  represented  in  the  first. 
Now  that  is  what  happened  in  this  case.    Gast  with  the  Franks 
did  not  answer  to  the  social  condition  and  situation  occupied 
by  the  hospes  among  the  Romans,  where  he  was  only  a  kind 
of  petty  tenant  without  a  lease  and  of  no  importance.     The 
analogy  is  thus  limited  to  the  fundamental  meaning  of  the 
word  guest,  which  is  very  vague  and  broad,  and  also  to  the 
power  of  withdrawing  the  tenure,  which  was  common  to  both 


THE  FRANK  155 

the  institutions.  It  is  impossible  to  see  any  resemblance 
between  the  Koman  hospes  and  the  vassal  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
whereas  the  resemblance  between  the  homines  ingenui  com- 
manentes  in  fundo  and  the  vassals  is  seen  at  a  glance  and 
proved  by  history.  The  reason  is  that  the  homines  ingenui 
commanentes  in  fundo  did  not  spring  from  the  Roman  hospites, 
and  consequently  there  is  a  gap  between  the  two  kinds  of 
hospitium. 

That,  then,  was  the  origin  of  the  free-holding. 

But  now  that  our  capable  emigrant  is  well  furnished  with 
assistants,  freemen,  who  answer  to  the  Auxiliaries  of  Employ- 
ment, as  Social  Science  calls  them,  how  will  he  be  able  to  screen 
them  from  the  interference  of  the  count  ? 

In  the  case  of  the  manual  labourers  he  had  no  difficulty. 
He  made  them  enter  into  the  condition  of  serfs,  and  that  done, 
the  count  had  no  more  to  say  about  the  matter,  either  from 
the  point  of  view  of  barbarian  or  of  Roman  law ;  for  slaves 
were  excluded  from  the  army,  and  were  under  the  jurisdiction 
of  their  master.  But  what  about  the  freemen  ? 

In  the  first  place,  let  us  see  how  they  escaped  military 
service. 

Of  course  the  object  of  levies  en  masse  was  to  collect  the 
largest  possible  number  of  freemen.  But  since  this  method 
of  recruiting  presupposes  the  absence  of  military  organisation, 
the  men  thus  levied  were  not  furnished  with  the  means  of 
living.  They  were  obliged  to  live  by  pillage.  Consequently 
they  could  not  be  levied  except  near  the  frontier  of  a  hostile 
country  :  otherwise  they  would  have  pillaged  their  own  country 
all  the  way  along  the  road.  This  put  a  restriction  as  to  area 
upon  the  levies  en  masse.  Moreover,  they  could  not  take 
place  frequently,  as  no  country  would  ever  tolerate  levies 
en  masse  on  all  occasions.  For  that  reason  levies  en 
masse  were  reserved  for  the  occasion  of  a  great  invasion, 
as  we  have  already  seen.  At  other  times  (and  the  Merovin- 
gians hardly  did  anything  but  fight !)  troops  had  to  be  raised 
by  methods  of  persuasion  and  no  longer  en  masse.  Now 
when  the  army  was  not  levied  en  masse,  the  area  from  which 
recruits  were  to  be  obtained  must  have  been  extended  in 
order  to  have  the  desired  number  of  men.  But  the  men  had 
to  travel  some  distance  before  reaching  the  hostile  territory 


156  THE  FRANK 

where  they  could  pillage,  and  pillaging  by  the  way  on  mendly 
territory  had  to  be  forbidden  ;  therefore  they  were  obliged 
to  procure  food  at  their  own  expense.  It  resulted  from  this 
that  only  those  who  had  some  means  of  their  own  could  be 
levied.  And  as,  under  the  economic  conditions  of  the  period, 
landed  property  was  the  ordinary  form  of  wealth  and  the 
only  form  in  which  it  could  be  estimated,  landowners  were 
the  only  men  who  could  be  levied.  This  system  of  making 
recruits  gradually  became  more  and  more  methodical  until 
it  assumed  an  official  form  under  the  Carlovingians  ;  but  it 
dated  from  the  first  conquests  of  the  Merovingians,  the  time 
when  levies  en  masse  were  in  full  swing. 

The  privileged  position  of  those  who  were  freemen,  and 
not  landowners  but  guests  of  a  landowner,  is  obvious  at  a 
glance.  They  were  not  subject  to  military  service  :  they  had 
no  property  of  their  own.  As  for  the  landowner,  I  have  already 
explained  that  he  joined  the  army,  or  rather  did  not  join  it, 
except  in  a  case  of  necessity  and  often  to  avoid  paying  what 
was  called  the  Ban  or  Heriban — that  is  to  say,  the  fine  of  thirty 
pence  :  a  heavy  fine,  but  light,  after  all,  for  a  large  landowner, 
especially  when  he  did  not  pay  it.  I  must  add  that  he  some- 
times sent  one  of  his  sons  in  his  stead  :  it  meant  the  beginning 
of  the  son's  emigration  to  find  an  estate  of  his  own. 

That  is  the  way  in  which  the  "  guests  "  were  exempted 
from  military  service. 

How  did  they  escape  the  count's  jurisdiction  ? 

We  have  already  seen  that  the  Frank  knew  how  to  make 
use  of  the  king's  truste.  Though  he  had  entered  the  truste  with 
the  object  of  becoming  rich,  he  was  still  better  able  to  profit 
by  it  later  on.  Moreover,  presents — and  no  small  number 
of  them  were  brought  to  the  Champ  de  Mars  and  offered  on 
similar  occasions — were  all  that  was  necessary  to  procure  entries 
to  the  court.  By  winning  favour,  through  rendering  services 
and  offering  gifts,  the  great  landowner  ingratiated  himself 
with  the  king's  steward  (mainbour)  without  in  any  way  com- 
mitting his  estate — that  is  to  say,  he  gained  the  privilege  for 
himself  and  all  those  on  his  land  of  passing  over  the  count's 
jurisdiction,  if  he  distrusted  it  in  the  least,  and  went 
straight  to  that  of  the  king.  By  this  act  alone  he  was 
constituted  advocate  or  attorney  for  those  on  his  estate — 


THE  FRANK  157 

that  is  to  say,  he  was  authorised  to  take  their  defence  upon 
himself. 

That  is  how  the  count's  judicial  powers  were  circumvented. 
The  king's  court  of  justice  was  very  far  away  !  So  the  "  guests  " 
of  the  estate  had  no  one  to  interfere  with  them  but  the  king. 
Their  landowner  was  also  their  official  counsel  for  the  defence. 

It  was  by  privily  winning  over  the  king's  steward  (mainbour) 
that  a  number  of  landowners  gradually  arrived  at  the  im- 
munity mentioned  above,  and  got  into  their  own  hands  the 
right  of  dispensing  justice  to  their  freemen.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  it  is  obvious  that  the  landowner,  when  he  became  his 
men's  counsel,  in  reality  thereby  pronounced  judgment  on 
them,  since  he  would  naturally  have  defended  them  well  or 
ill,  before  the  king,  according  as  he  did  or  did  not  wish  them 
to  be  acquitted.  It  was  not  long  before  the  king  found  it  quite 
as  simple  to  allow  them  to  be  legally  judged  by  their  counsel 
for  the  defence.  Exactly  the  same  phenomenon  occurred  in 
the  Roman  Empire  and  among  the  barbarians  in  the  case  of  the 
legal  defender  of  the  city,  usually  the  bishop.  The  defender 
had  the  right  of  bringing  the  affairs  of  the  city  straight  to  the 
king's  court  of  justice,  and  of  defending  them  before  the  king. 
Before  long  he  was  himself  constituted  judge  for  the  majority 
of  cases  ;  it  caused  less  delay. 

To  continue.  The  small  landowners,  unless  they  were  very 
poor,  were  liable  to  serve  in  the  army,  and  were  subject  to  the 
count's  jurisdiction.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  they  looked 
with  eyes  of  envy  upon  the  "  guests  "  of  the  large  estate,  who 
were  not  only  provided  with  a  plot  of  land,  but  were  also  exempt 
from  military  service  and  escaped  the  count's  jurisdiction. 
We  observed,  when  dealing  with  the  Celtic  clan  and  the  Roman 
system  of  clientship,  that  in  all  stormy  epochs  the  weaker  men 
came  to  a  direct  agreement  of  their  own  accord  with  the  stronger, 
that  they  should  have  their  support  and  rely  on  their  protection. 
This  was  called  commendation.  In  seeking  commendation  a 
man  would  use  different  means,  and  would  obtain  different 
results,  according  to  the  possibilities  within  his  reach.  Now 
the  choice  lay  between  the  count  and  the  large  landowner,  the 
favour  of  the  one  or  the  other  had  to  be  won.  But  the  pro- 
tection offered  by  the  large  landowner  was  alone  sure  and 
dependable,  because  he  personally  remained  on  the  spot,  his 


158  THE  FRANK 

estate  could  not  move  away,  and  he  had  an  heir  to  whom  he 
bequeathed  his  "  guests."  The  count,  on  the  contrary,  was 
constantly  changed,  and  did  not  choose  his  successor.  From 
the  moment  when  the  position  of  the  freemen  on  the  large 
estate  became  what  we  have  described,  the  small  landowners, 
who  hitherto  had  only  aspired  to  a  place  in  the  count's  Iruste 
in  order  to  reach  that  of  the  king,  speedily  turned  their  backs 
upon  it  and  appealed  to  the  large  landowners. 

The  blow  was  struck.  The  principle  of  feudalism  was 
established ;  the  large  landowner  had  defeated  the  truste  all 
along  the  line.  It  only  remains  to  follow  the  history  of  the 
movement.  The  movement  itself  is  unmistakable.  The 
stability  of  the  estate  makes  way  against  the  instability  of 
the  truste.  That  is  the  secret ;  therein  lies  the  superiority  of 
the  new  social  order. 

The  form  the  new  commendation  was  to  take  was  quite 
determined.  The  small  landowner  had  merely  to  change  the 
title  of  his  property — that  is  to  say,  he  gave  his  land  into  the 
full  possession  of  the  large  landowner,  who,  in  his  turn,  by  an 
amicable  arrangement,  restored  it  to  him,  not  as  his  own  pro- 
perty, but  to  be  held  as  "  guest-land,"  as  the  tenure  of  a  free- 
man. Thus  the  small  landowner  became  the  gast,  the  vassus 
of  the  large  landowner. 

It  is  easy  to  see  the  effects  of  this  novel  proceeding  upon 
the  condition  of  the  first  free  tenures,  of  the  hospitia  properly 
so  called.  The  new  tenure  could  not,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  be 
withdrawn,  since,  after  all,  it  was  still  the  property  of  the  holder, 
though  under  a  disguised  form.  These  free  tenures,  then,  went 
on  increasing,  and  all  of  them  had  the  character,  pure  and 
simple,  of  holdings  in  perpetuity. 

In  the  early  stages  a  thousand  forms  were  adopted  to  make 
the  act  of  perpetuity  seem  to  be  a  favour  conferred  by  the 
large  landowner ;  but  there  was  no  doubt  about  the  result : 
the  tenures  were  hereditary.  Thus  the  freemen  belonging  to 
the  estate  were  attached  to  the  estate  in  perpetuity,  like  the 
ordinary  serfs.  The  only  point  in  which  they  differed  from 
the  serfs,  apart  from  the  difference  of  their  non-servile  em- 
ployments and  of  their  free  services,  was  that  they  were  free  to 
leave  the  estate,  but  had  to  leave  their  property  behind,  which 
made  it  rather  difficult. 


THE  FRANK  159 

This  coalition  was  formidable  indeed  !  All  the  more  so 
because  it  was  founded  not  upon  personal  ties,  but  upon  the 
estate,  upon  concessions  of  land.  It  was  a  thoroughly  Saxon 
idea  !  How  consequent  all  of  it  is  !  What  a  unity  of  method 
it  represents ! 

The  kind  of  large  estate  which  achieved  the  greatest  success 
in  the  movement  towards  commendation,  which  we  may 
describe  as  "  landed  commendation,"  was  the  estate  of  the 
churches  and  the  abbeys. 

In  theory,  these  estates  had  no  other  rights  than  those 
acquired  by  the  large  lay  estates.  Moreover,  they  were  largely 
the  result  of  donations  of  lay  Franks,  who  gave  their  land 
on  condition  that  it  should  be  kept  intact  and  that  the  manage- 
ment of  it  should  continue  the  same.  But,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
the  Church  offered  very  special  guarantees  :  1.  All  that  belonged 
to  it  was  protected  by  ecclesiastical  censures.  2.  Immunities 
were  more  freely  granted  by  it,  because  of  the  special  position 
held  by  the  clerks,  and  were,  nevertheless,  extended  to  the 
whole  of  the  estate.  3.  The  bishops  and  abbots  (except  when 
the  kings  from  the  time  of  Charles  Martel  abused  their  power 
and  interfered)  were  masters  chosen  subject  to  certain  con- 
ditions of  canon  law,  and  hence  inspired  peculiar  confidence. 

Commendation  to  ecclesiastical  estates  by  preference  took 
the  form  of  the  prdcaire — that  is  to  say,  rent  was  paid  for 
the  land  ceded.  If  a  man  gave  his  property  to  the  Church,  and 
received  it  back  as  a  tenure,  he  was  bound  to  pay  a  small  rental. 
This  is  explained  by  canonical  law  :  property  given  in  that 
way  and  made  over  again  in  view  of  the  commendation  was 
obviously  not  destined  for  the  religious  worship,  nor  for  the 
officiating  priests,  nor  for  the  poor  ;  nevertheless,  as  those 
were  the  objects  to  which  the  goods  of  the  Church  were  supposed 
to  be  devoted,  it  was  the  custom  to  allow  no  one  to  use  any 
property  placed  in  the  hands  of  the  Church  without  perform- 
ing some  ecclesiastical  function,  or  paying  something  for 
the  use  of  it  towards  the  expenses  of  religious  worship, 
and  for  the  benefit  of  the  poor :  the  prfoaire  fulfilled  this  last 
condition. 

Commendation  to  churches  became  so  popular  that  Chil- 
peric  ii.  said,  "  Our  treasury  is  impoverished  (for  the  taxes 
no  longer  brought  in  anything),  our  wealth  has  passed  to  the 


160  THE  FRANK 

churches  ;  the  bishops  are  the  only  kings  ;  the  brilliancy  of 
our  court  has  vanished,  and  the  bishops  of  the  cities  are  invested 
with  it."  And  Dagobert  began  to  plunder  the  churches  openly, 
professing  that  they  ought  to  be  poor. 

Let  us  pass  on  to  the  next  stage.  It  is  clear  that  at  this 
rate  the  counts'  offices  were  rapidly  falling  into  the  back- 
ground. Their  main  sources  of  income  were  the  fines  inflicted 
by  courts  of  law,  of  which  their  share  amounted  to  two-thirds  ; 
the  confiscations  of  small  properties,  for  which  they  found 
excellent  reasons;  the  dues  of  "all  kinds,  which  they  extorted 
from  weaker  subjects ;  the  taxes,  which  they  so  handled  as 
to  keep  a  large  portion  for  themselves.  Now  a  stop  was  put 
to  all  that  by  the  power  and  immunities  possessed  by  the 
large  landowners  :  there  were  no  judicial  trials,  nor  confisca- 
tions, nor  intimidations,  nor  taxes,  which  were  not  thwarted 
and  opposed. 

So,  henceforth,  the  people  belonging  to  the  king's  truste 
demanded  as  a  recompense  for  their  services  lands,  rather 
than  the  title  of  count,  in  order  that  they  might  draw  a  better 
income  than  they  drew  when  they  performed  the  duties  of 
counts.  Thereupon  the  Merovingians  began  to  despoil  them- 
selves of  their  immense  wealth,  and  of  the  wealth  of  the  treasury, 
in  order  to  give  it  to  their  faithful  followers.  Soon  no  other 
resource  was  left  to  them  but  to  confiscate  the  goods  of  the 
Church  wholesale,  in  order  to  satisfy  their  men.  But  while 
they  were  giving  away  their  own  property  or  that  of  others, 
the  kings  bethought  themselves  of  modifying  their  old  method 
of  procedure  in  this  respect. 

In  the  early  days  of  monarchy,  when  they  gave,  they  gave 
with  full  rights  of  ownership.  Sometimes,  however,  they 
simply  granted  the  use  of  land  for  life,  the  usufruct,  as  we 
say  :  but  that  was  much  more  seldom.  It  often  happened 
that  those  who  had  received  the  full  ownership  in  perpetuity, 
or  their  children  after  them,  turned  against  the  king.  Only 
in  such  cases  did  the  king  consider  himself  justified  in  taking 
back  his  property,  even  when  no  stipulation  as  to  the  matter 
appeared  to  have  been  made.  The  kings  learned  a  lesson 
from  these  sudden  shifts  of  devotion,  and  when  they  were 
obliged  to  multiply  their  gifts  they  were  prudent  enough  to 
hand  them  over,  as  a  rule,  only  with  rights  of  usufruct,  and 


THE  FRANK  161 

they  were  then  known  as  benefices  (beneficia) ;  the  usufruct 
might  be  extended  to  the  descendants,  if  they  pleased  the 
king  as  their  fathers  did.  This  accounts  for  the  appearance 
of  an  enormous  number  of  benefices  towards  the  end  of  the 
Merovingian  line  of  kings. 

Since,  therefore,  the  holders  of  benefices  were  not  holders 
of  gifts,  but  people  belonging  to  the  king's  estate,  they  ought, 
logically,  to  have  been  exempt  from  military  service,  unless 
they  held  property  of  their  own.  The  kings,  and  especially 
the  ancestors  of  the  Carlovingians  and  the  first  of  that  line, 
arranged  matters  better,  and,  as  regarded  military  service, 
put  their  beneficed  people  on  the  same  footing  as  the  landowners. 

But  let  us  go  still  further.  The  king's  beneficiaries,  come 
what  might,  began  granting  parts  of  their  benefices  to  men 
belonging  to  them,  grants  which  were  to  hold  good  only 
as  long  as  their  own  benefices  lasted.  These  sub -beneficiaries 
were  called  on,  quite  rightly,  according  to  what  has  just  been 
said,  to  join  the  army ;  but  the  beneficiary  who  had  made 
the  sub-grants  claimed  them  as  "  his  men,"  and  said  that 
since  the  prince  constrained  them  to  go  to  battle  they  ought 
not  to  go  except  under  the  leadership  of  their  master,  not 
under  that  of  the  count  nor  under  that  of  the  prince.  It  was 
very  necessary  to  remain  master  of  one's  own  men,  and  not 
to  see  them  arming  against  oneself  !  The  time  was  past  when 
kings  could  resist  the  dominant  and  resolute  will  of  great 
beneficiaries  united  to  great  landowners,  who  had  themselves 
adopted  the  benefice  as  a  form  of  commendation,  and  had 
their  own  sub -beneficiaries  to  support  them.  Then,  indeed, 
military  feudalism  was  an  accomplished  fact.  The  vast 
majority  of  freemen,  if  they  went  to  war  at  all,  marched  behind 
their  great  landowner  or  great  beneficiary,  and  not  behind  the 
count  or  the  king,  except  when  they  went  to  fight  for  the  king. 

This  fact  comes  out  very  clearly  in  the  conventus,  great 
assemblies  of  the  principal  personages  of  the  state,  which  took 
place  under  the  later  Merovingians.  The  seniores,  the  lords, 
those  great  landowners  or  beneficiaries,  came  to  the  assembly 
at  the  head  of  their  own  men,  who  were  armed  and  divided 
into  regiments,  and  did  not  obey  the  king  ;  they  were  called 
vassi  (vassals)  :  the  name  was  already  coined.1 

1  Fustel  de  Coulanges,  Monarchic  franque. 
II 


162  THE  FRANK 

So  the  king  found  himself  alone  face  to  face  with  a  small 
number  of  great  landowners  and  great  beneficiaries,  who  kept 
all  his  subjects  under  their  own  control  and  kept  them  equipped 
with  arms.  The  estate  had  conquered ;  it  was  master  :  the 
country  was  governed  by  the  estate. 

The  terms  corresponding  to  this  state  of  things  are  easy  to 
grasp.  The  lands  held  with  full  rights  of  ownership  were 
aleux — that  is  to  say,  hereditary  lands.  Their  owners  were 
simply  "  subjects  "  of  the  king — that  is  to  say,  they  were  not 
bound  to  him  by  any  special  tie:  The  lands  held  as  freeholds, 
but  only  for  life,  under  agreements  of  every  kind,  in  which 
were  formulated  the  charges  that  had  to  be  filled  with  regard 
to  the  estate,  were  called  "  benefices."  The  title  of  "  vassals 
of  the  estate  "  was  extended  to  the  holders  of  such  lands.  If 
the  domain  of  which  the  benefice  was  a  part  belonged  to  the 
king,  they  were  the  "  king's  vassals,"  and  not  merely  his 
"  subjects."  If  the  owner  of  the  estate  were  a  private  man, 
they  were  his  vassals,  and  he  was  called  "  senior,  seigneur, 
lord." 

The  great  landowners,  then,  were  bound  to  go  to  battle 
under  the  king's  command,  in  the  quality  of  subjects ;  the 
great  beneficiaries  in  the  quality  of  vassals.  But  the  difference 
was  merely  nominal,  because  the  king's  beneficiaries  were  not 
small  beneficiaries,  who  formed  a  numerous  body  immediately 
under  the  king's  command ;  they  were  large  beneficiaries,  who 
appeared  at  the  head  of  their  own  vassals  (i.e.  of  those  to  whom 
they  had  granted  small  benefices  out  of  the  large  benefice), 
and  the  large  beneficiaries,  although  they  were  few,  laid  down 
the  law  to  the  king  quite  as  much  as  the  large  landowners. 

From  that  time  onwards  vassalage  was  synonymous  with 
military  service,  and  assumed  characteristics  it  did  not  show 
at  first ;  but  it  was  the  landowner  who  had  the  right  to  claim 
that  military  service. 

The  importance  that  was  attached  to  military  service,  from 
the  time  when  it,  in  this  way,  became  the  decisive  instrument 
of  the  power  of  private  men — that  is,  of  the  lords — caused 
it  to  be  established  that  those  of  the  vassals  who  were  still 
exempt,  for  diverse  reasons,  from  military  service,  passed  to  the 
second  rank,  and  the  current  title  of  vassal  was  used  to  indicate 
a  vassal  who  owed  military  service. 


THE  FRANK  163 

What  was  left  of  the  counts  ?  There  was  no  possible 
opening  for  a  count  among  all  the  large  landowners  and  large 
beneficiaries ;  they  had  absorbed  all  the  land,  all  the  people, 
all  the  functions  into  their  estates  ! 

The  title  of  count  or  duke  could  no  longer  be  given  to  any 
but  large  landowners  or  large  beneficiaries,  whose  position  was 
not  thereby  changed.  In  reality,  they  acted  as  counts  or 
dukes  only  on  their  own  estates,  and  their  power  was  just  as 
great  before  they  bore  the  title. 

The  consequence  was  that  the  king  and  the  counts  were 
annihilated  by  the  landowners  or  beneficiaries  of  estates. 

That  was  the  final  result. 

We  now  know  and  understand  how  things  stood  at  the  time 
of  the  decadence  of  the  Merovingians. 

It  was  not  long  before  the  signs  of  decadence  showed  them- 
selves, for  before  two  centuries  had  elapsed  after  Clovis  had 
triumphantly  established  the  Komano- Germanic  truste  in  Paris, 
the  decadence  of  the  Merovingians  was  practically  accom- 
plished. The  Frankish  emigrant,  who  at  that  time  aban- 
doned the  truste  in  order  to  settle  on  an  estate,  had  lost  no 
time  ! 

Nevertheless,  the  emigrant  did  not  pause  in  mid-career ; 
and,  in  the  following  century,  he  devoted  himself  to  the  accom- 
plishment of  two  coveted  designs  : 

1.  To  convert  the  life-use  of  benefices  into  hereditary  use, 
pure  and  simple,  in  perpetuity. 

2.  To  convert  the  titles  of  count  and  duke,  which  were 
considered   as  revocable   and  personal,   into   permanent   and 
hereditary  titles  attached  to  the  estate  of  the  man  to  whom 
they  had  once  been  granted. 

Amongst  the  great  landowners  and  beneficiaries  who  had 
this  object  in  view,  there  was  one  who  achieved  it  in  all  its 
completeness,  with  his  unparalleled  genius,  whilst  the  rest 
continued  the  struggle  in  pursuit  of  their  own  private  ends. 

This  man  was  the  great  landowner  and  beneficiary  of  Aus- 
trasia.  He  had  more  than  a  hundred  estates,  all  told,  (and 
what  estates  !)  in  the  valley  of  the  Rhine  ;  he  had  others  besides 
in  all  parts  of  the  kingdom  as  far  as  the  Pyrenees. 

He  possessed  in  those  estates  ample  means  for  maldng  the 
two  highest  titles  in  the  kingdom  hereditary  in  his  family  : 


164  THE  FRANK 

namely,  that  of  the  Duke  of  Austrasia  and  of  the  mayor  of  the 
palace.  And  that  was  what  he  did. 

He  was  called  Pepin  of  Landen,  after  his  favourite  estate. 

His  descendant  in  the  fourth  generation  considered  that  it 
was  just  as  easy  to  take  the  title  of  king. 

And  in  this  way  Pepin  the  Short,  associated  heir  of  the 
greatest  landowner  in  Austrasia,  personified  the  triumphant 
victory  of  the  Frankish  emigrant  and  his  estate  over  the  Mero- 
vingian warrior  and  his  truste. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE  FEUDAL  SYSTEM 

PART  I— CHARLEMAGNE 

THE  government  of  the  Carlovingians  could  not  exhibit 
the  same  characteristics  as  that  of  the  Merovingians. 
The  accession  of  Pepin  the  Short  did  not  simply  indicate  a 
change  of  dynasty ;  with  him  a  new  political  regime  was 
established,  the  direct  outcome  of  the  development  of  the 
particularist  form  of  society :  that  is,  sovereignty,  based 
upon  the  estate. 

We  shall  get  a  good  grasp  of  this  new  form  of  government 
if  we  study  the  man  who  gave  it  its  highest  expression,  namely, 
Charlemagne. 

The  whole  strength  of  Charlemagne's  position,  king  and 
emperor  though  he  was,  lay  in  the  fact  that  he  was  a  great 
landowner.  The  family  of  Heristal  attained  to  power  through 
their  large  estates,  which  were  organised  on  the  Frankish  system. 
When  they  subsequently  lost  their  estates  they  lost  their 
power  too.  And,  as  the  regime  introduced  at  the  accession 
of  the  Carlovingians  had  not  disappeared  when  they  lost  their 
estates,  it  was  natural  that  the  family  of  the  tJapetians,  who 
were  at  that  moment  the  greatest  landowners  in  France,  should 
take  their  place. 

The  mere  knowledge  that  Charlemagne  was  essentially 
a  great  landowner  gives  the  key  to  his  life.  It  can  be  justly 
said  of  him  that  he  knew  nothing  of  town  life.  It  is  a  startling 
innovation  that  the  head  of  an  immense  state,  the  adminis- 
trator of  a  colossal  power,  should  not  know  what  a  capital  city 
is.  His  government  had  no  central  seat  in  a  city.  In  fact, 
no  one  can  succeed  in  proving  that  Aix-la-Chapelle  was  the 
point  where  the  power  of  the  Carlovingians  was  concentrated. 

165 


166  THE  FEUDAL  SYSTEM 

Charlemagne  had  plenty  of  towns  from  which  to  choose  a 
place  where  he  might  establish  his  offices  and  display  his  regal 
pomp  :    he  chose  none  of  them.     His  true  centre,  from  which 
in  his  eyes  everything  else  radiated,  was  the  old  favourite 
estate  of  his  family,  the  domain  of  Heristal  in  the  valley  of 
the  Meuse  opposite  the  Saxon  plain.     And  he  took  very  good 
care  not  to  found  a  city  there.     Aix,  so  named  because  of  its 
warm  waters,  and  known  later  by  the  distinctive  name  of 
Aix-la-Chapelle,    was    not    far    from    there.     "  Charles    took 
much  delight  in  bathing  there  in  the  waters  which  were  supplied 
by  a  hot  spring,"  Eginhard  tells  us.     "He  was  passionately 
fond  of  swimming,  and  became  so  clever  in  the  art,  that  there 
was  no  one  who  was  a  match  for  him.     It  was  for  this  reason 
that  he  built  a  palace  at  Aix-la-Chapelle,  and  lived  there  con- 
stantly during  the  last  years  of  his  life.     He  used  to  invite 
not  only  his  sons  to  come  and  bathe  with  him,  but  also  his 
friends,  the  magnates  of  his  court,  and  sometimes  even  the 
soldiers  of  his  guard,  so  that  a  hundred  persons  and  more 
often  bathed   together."     Elsewhere  the  same  historian  says, 
"  Charles  kept  the  observances  of  the  Christian  religion  with 
the  greatest  fervour  ;    its  principles  had  been  inculcated  in 
him  from  his  earliest  years.     It  was  for  this  reason  that  he 
caused  a  magnificent  basilisk  to  be  built  at  Aix-la-Chapelle 
and  adorned  it  with  gold  and  silver,  with  sconces,  railings, 
and  doors  of  massive  bronze,  and  sent  for  pillars  and  pieces 
of  marble,  with  which  to  embellish  it,  to  Rome  and  Ravenna, 
since  they  could  not  be  obtained  elsewhere.     He  frequented 
this   church   assiduously  in   the   evening,   the   morning,   and 
even  during  the  night,  to  be  present  at  the  services  and  the 
holy  sacrifice  of  the  Mass,  as  much  as  his  health  would  allow."  l 
That  is  all  that  the  contemporary  writer,  the  intimate  friend 
who  devoted  himself  to  the  task  of  making  an  indelible  picture 
of  Charlemagne's  government  for  posterity  to  see,  found  to  say 
about  the  part  Aix-la-Chapelle  played  in  the  history  of  the 
mighty  leader  of  the  Franks.     Our  modern  savants,  who  have 
the  unfortunate  habit  of  twisting  the  evidence  of  history  so 
as  to  fit  in  with  the  ideas  of  human  society  which  they  have 
formed  to  suit  their  own  prejudices,  have  not  been  able  to 
accept  the  fact,  which  is  strange  to  their  eyes,  of  a  great  empire 
1  Eginhard,  Vie  de  I'Empereur  Charles,  chaps,  xxii.  and  xxvi. 


CHARLEMAGNE  167 

without  a  capital.  Their  efforts  have  only  succeeded  in  adding 
to  the  account  of  Aix-la-Chapelle  a  few  honorary  titles,  which 
apply  just  as  well  to  a  royal  residence  as  to  a  capital,  and  of 
which  the  most  emphatic  are  drawn  from  a  poetical  work. 
Nothing  of  that  kind  has  any  weight  against  a  detailed  know- 
ledge of  the  long  series  of  Charlemagne's  deeds  and  heroic 
actions,  in  which  Aix-la-Chapelle  is  far  from  figuring  as  the 
accepted  headquarters  of  the  government.  We  shall  learn 
more  about  this  presently. 

Charlemagne  was  an  active  landowner  by  profession,  so 
that  he  did  not  neglect  his  other  estates  for  Heristal,  but  merely 
looked  upon  it  as  the  centre  of  his  affections.  He  went  from 
one  domain  to  another,  according  as  necessity  called  him  or 
circumstances  directed. 

Nothing  can  be  more  interesting  in  this  respect  than  the 
list  which  Eginhard  drew  up,  year  after  year,  of  the  places 
to  which  Charlemagne  transferred  his  residence,  and  where 
he  dealt  with  the  greatest  affairs  of  the  State.  It  is  necessary 
to  read  through  the  whole  series  of  Annals  in  order  to  get 
an  idea  of  the  extreme  to  which  Charlemagne  pushed  the 
singular  habit  I  have  just  mentioned.  In  fact,  he  travelled  so 
much  from  place  to  place  as  a  plain  private  man,  and  was  so 
little  concerned  about  the  establishment  of  a  special  seat 
for  the  government,  that  there  is  not  a  place,  not  even  a  part 
of  the  kingdom,  which  is  designated  above  all  others  as  the 
place  for  the  general  assembly  of  the  Franks,  where  the  lords 
with  their  vassals  were  summoned  to  deliberate  on  war,  or 
for  the  reception  of  embassies,  who  were  therefore  obliged  to 
hunt  all  over  the  country,  and  often  even  beyond  the  frontiers, 
for  the  representative  of  the  Frankish  power.  I  will  quote 
a  few  samples  :  but  it  would  be  necessary  to  quote  the  whole, 
in  order  to  get  an  idea  of  its  extraordinary  continuity. 

"  The  year  771. — After  having  held  the  General  Assembly, 
which  he  summoned  this  year  at  Valenciennes,  on  the  Escaut, 
King  Charles  returned  to  Gaul  to  pass  the  winter.  He  spent 
Christmas  at  Attigny  and  Easter  at  Heristal. 

"  The  year  772. — King  Charles,  after  having  convoked 
the  General  Assembly  at  Worms,  resolved  to  make  war  on 
Saxony.  He  subsequently  returned  to  the  land  of  the  Franks, 
and  spent  Christmas  and  Easter  on  his  Heristal  estate. 


168  THE  FEUDAL  SYSTEM 

"  The  year  773. — Pope  Adrian  sent  an  embassy  to  Charles 
entreating  the  prince  to  protect  him  and  the  Romans  against 
the  Lombards.  .  .  .  The  messenger  intrusted  with  the 
charge  met  the  King  at  Thionville,  where  he  had  passed  the 
winter. 

"  The  year  775. — The  king  passed  the  winter  on  his  estate 
at  Kiersy,  and  determined  to  recommence  war  against  the 
Saxons.  He  held  the  General  Assembly  on  his  estate  at  Duren 
(15J  miles  from  Aix-la-Chapelle). 

"  The  year  776. — As  the  king  was  re-entering  the  Assembly, 
the  intelligence  reached  him  that  Rotgaud  the  Lombard  was 
attempting  a  revolt  in  Italy.  He  took  the  pick  of  his  troops 
with  him.  Scarcely  had  he  crossed  the  Alps  when  news  was 
brought  him  that  the  citadel  of  Ehresburg  had  been  captured 
by  the  Saxons.  After  having  held  the  Assembly  at  Worms, 
he  resolved  to  march  with  all  speed  against  the  Saxons.  .  .  . 
He  rebuilt  the  castle  of  Ehresburg,  which  had  been  destroyed, 
and  returned  to  Heristal  to  pass  the  winter. 

"  The  year  111. — With  the  first  breath  of  spring  he  set  out 
for  Nimegue,  where  he  spent  Easter.  Subsequently,  seeing 
that  it  was  useless  to  trust  the  treacherous  promises  of  the 
Saxons,  he  determined  to  go  to  a  place  called  Paderborn  (in  the 
Saxon  plain)  to  hold  the  General  Assembly  of  his  people.  (There 
he  received  once  again  the  submission  of  the  Saxons.)  .  .  . 
The  Saracen  Ibn-al-Arbi  came  to  that  town  to  present  himself 
before  the  king.  He  had  come  from  Spain,  accompanied  by 
other  Saracens,  in  order  to  surrender  himself  and  all  the  towns 
which  the  king  of  the  Saracens  had  intrusted  to  his  charge 
into  the  hands  of  the  king  of  the  Franks.  After  having  ad- 
journed the  General  Assembly  mentioned  above,  the  king 
returned  to  Gaul ;  he  spent  Christmas  at  his  estate  of  Douzy 
(five  miles  south-east  of  Sedan),  and  Easter  at  Casseneuil  in 
Aquitaine,  fifteen  miles  north  of  Agen."  * 

In  this  way  things  were  carried  on  without  any  question 
arising  as  to  which  town  was  to  be  considered  as  the  capital 
of  the  country. 

I  will  quote  a  few  more  passages  which  are  of  peculiar 
interest. 

"  The  year  800. — With  the  return  of  spring,  towards  the 
1  Eginhard,  Annales  des  Francs  de  Vannf.e,  741 ;  &  VannP.e,  829. 


CHARLEMAGNE  169 

middle  of  March,  tlie  king  left  Aix-la-Chapelle,  and  journeyed 
round  the  shores  of  the  Gallic  Ocean ;  he  established  a  fleet 
in  those  latitudes,  which  were  then  infested  by  northmen  with 
their  pirate  ships,  placed  garrisons  along  the  coast,  and  spent 
Easter  at  Centule  in  the  Monastery  of  St.  Riquier.  He  con- 
tinued his  journey  along  the  seacoast,  and  reached  the  city 
of  Rouen  :  then  he  crossed  the  Seine  and  journeyed  to  Saint 
Martin  de  Tours,  in  order  to  perform  his  devotions  there. 
He  remained  at  Tours  for  a  few  days,  detained  by  the  hope- 
less condition  of  his  wife  Lintgard,  who  died  in  that  town, 
and  was  there  buried.  The  king  subsequently  returned  via 
Orleans  and  Paris  to  Aix-la-Chapelle ;  and  at  the  beginning 
of  the  month  of  August  journeyed  to  Mayence,  where  he  held 
the  General  Assembly,  and  announced  his  intention  of  making 
a  journey  to  Italy. 

"  The  year  804. — Towards  the  middle  of  September  the 
emperor  travelled  to  Cologne.  After  having  disbanded  his 
army  he  went  first  to  Aix-la-Chapelle,  and  thence  to  theArdennes 
for  hunting.  Then  he  returned  to  his  palace  at  Aix.  Towards 
the  middle  of  November  he  received  the  news  that  the  pope 
desired  to  spend  Christmas  with  him  in  any  place  that  would 
suit  his  convenience.  He  hastened  to  send  his  son  Charles 
to  Saint  Maurice  (in  Valais),  with  directions  to  receive  the 
pope  with  due  honour.  He  himself  went  to  meet  the  pope 
at  Rheims,  and  after  receiving  him  in  that  town  conducted  him 
first  to  his  estate  of  Kiersy,  where  they  spent  Christmas,  and 
afterwards  to  Aix-la-Chapelle.^ 

In  this  long  sequence  of  events,  Charlemagne's  preference 
for  his  domains  is  manifest.  As  I  have  said  elsewhere,  it 
was  the  estate  which  governed.  The  winters,  from  Christmas 
to  Easter,  almost  constantly  passed  on  his  estates,  show  what 
a  firm  hold  rural  traditions  had  upon  the  most  illustrious  of 
the  Franks.  If,  "  in  the  last  years  of  his  life,"  he  came  back 
most  frequently  to  his  palace  at  Aix-la-Chapelle,  it  was  really, 
as  Eginhard  suggests,  from  a  sporting  instinct,  and  not  from 
any  love  of  town  life  or  politics.  Exactly  the  same  rural 
tendencies  were  exhibited  by  Charlemagne's  father  and  prede- 
cessor, Pepin  the  Short.1  The  Merovingians,  as  well  as  all 
the  monarchs  of  the  world,  had  of  course  their  country  houses, 
1  Eginhard,  Annales,  years  753,  757,  and  from  759  to  768. 


170  THE  FEUDAL  SYSTEM 

which  were  their  places  of  amusement,  and  where  it  occasion- 
ally happened  that  some  event  of  note  took  place.  But  they 
all  had  their  capital  town,  which  was  their  great  stronghold, 
the  genuine  centre  of  their  power,  whose  name  has  been  pre- 
served in  history  by  their  kingdom  :  there  was  the  kingdom 
of  Soissons,  the  kingdom  of  Paris,  the  kingdom  of  Orleans, 
the  Idngdom  of  Metz.  Those  are  all  famous  towns,  but  their 
names  scarcely  figure  at  all  in  Charlemagne's  administration. 
They  are  eclipsed  by  the  estates  of  Heristal,  Attigny,  Kiersy, 
and  Duren. 

Charlemagne  depended  entirely  on  his  own  estates  for  far 
the  greater  part  of  his  supplies,  and  for  all  that  was  essential : 
so  true  is  it  that  the  domain  was  the  principal  factor  in  his 
administrative  organisation.  In  the  political  system  which 
resulted  from  the  effort  the  landowners  made  to  rid  themselves 
of  the  interference  of  external  power  in  their  estates,  it  is 
obvious  that  taxes  were  a  thing  of  the  past.  Apart  from 
the  revenue  derived  from  the  estate,  there  were  scarcely 
any  recognised  dues  except  what  one  estate  paid  to  another. 
Of  course  Charlemagne  had  many  dues  of  that  sort,  but  they 
were  paid  to  him  only  in  his  quality  of  landed  proprietor, 
not  in  his  quality  of  sovereign ;  those  dues  were  private,  and 
did  not  form  part  of  the  public  funds.  Fines  payable  to  the 
Treasury  had  almost  disappeared,  like  the  taxes,  since  the 
king's  courts  of  law  had  been  replaced  almost  everywhere 
by  those  held  by  the  great  landowners,  even  when  it  was  a 
case  of  a  trial  of  freemen — that  is,  of  small  proprietors  who 
had  almost  all  become  transformed  into  vassals.  Taxes 
originally  Eoman  were  still  collected  from  certain  towns,  but 
they  too  had  almost  all  fallen  into  private  hands  :  one  by 
one  the  towns  had  been  given  to  the  large  domains,  in  which 
they  were,  so  to  speak,  swamped,  or  had  been  swallowed  up 
by  them,  owing  to  their  position  of  dependence. 

Charlemagne's  chief  income,  then,  was  derived  from  his 
estates. 

Therefore  it  is  no  strange  thing  to  note  that  he  placed  the 
management  of  his  own  property  at  the  head  of  his  adminis- 
trative duties.  It  shows  a  wrong  grasp  of  his  position  to  say, 
as  historians  generally  do,  that  he  did  not  shrink  from 
bringing  his  genius  to  bear  upon  the  details  of  the  manage- 


CHARLEMAGNE  171 

ment  of  his  estates.  In  so  doing  he  was  fulfilling  the  functions 
of  no  less  a  personage  than  the  Lord  of  the  Treasury,  the 
one  important  minister  in  every  well-regulated  state. 

We  must  not  forget  that  war  expenses  were  not  put  down 
to  his  account.  Military  service,  as  we  mentioned  before, 
required  that  all  those  who  were  obliged  to  join  the  army 
should  serve  at  their  own  personal  cost. 

Charlemagne  was  really  in  the  position  of  a  great  landowner 
who  lived  in  the  country  and  applied  himself  to  the  adminis- 
tration of  public  affairs  :  only,  instead  of  having  one  estate  of 
a  few  hundred  acres,  he  had  more  than  a  hundred  estates  of 
an  enormous  size,  as  large  as  provinces  ;  and  instead  of  devoting 
himself  to  the  interests  of  a  canton,  he  devoted  himself  to  those 
of  an  empire.  But  the  type  is  the  same  in  both  cases.  The 
position  he  occupied  was  reflected  in  the  highly  characteristic 
way  in  which  he  conducted  the  things  which  concerned  him 
most  nearly,  and  in  his  manner  of  hfe  at  home.  We  shall 
gradually  come  to  see  that  it  was  strongly  marked  in  his  dealings 
with  the  Franks,  in  his  methods  of  public  administration, 
and  in  all  the  highest  branches  of  his  sovereign  government. 

The  costume  he  wore  every  day  was  that  of  the  ordinary 
Frank,  the  "  bourgeois  "  dress  of  the  Germans,  and  he  did  not 
array  himself,  after  the  manner  of  the  Merovingians,  in  the 
uniform  of  Roman  civil  or  military  dignitaries.  And  when 
one  day  (and  it  was  no  idea  of  his  own)  he  was  con- 
secrated emperor,  "  it  was  only  in  Rome  at  the  request  of  Pope 
Adrian,  in  the  first  place,  and  subsequently  at  the  entreaties 
of  Pope  Leo.  his  successor,  that  he  allowed  himself  to  be  invested 
in  the  long  tunic,  the  chlamys,  and  the  sandals  of  the  Roman. 
At  great  festivals  his  dress  was  embroidered  with  gold  and  his 
buskins  with  precious  stones  ;  a  gold  clasp  secured  his  short 
cloak,  and  he  wore  on  his  head  a  diadem,  glittering  with  gold 
and  jewels ;  but  on  ordinary  days  his  dress  was  simple,  and 
differed  but  little  from  that  of  the  people.1 

As  revealed  in  the  organisation  of  his  household,  Charlemagne 
appears  as  a  great  and  influential  landed  proprietor,  who  tried 
by  his  example  to  give  an  impetus  to  the  country  and  to  society, 
in  a  direction  in  which  government  could  not  act,  or,  at  any 
rate,  not  with  any  good  result.  Literature,  art,  and  science 

1  Eginhard,  Vie  de  VEmpereur  Charles,  chap,  xxiii. 


172  THE  FEUDAL  SYSTEM 

were  cultivated  beneath  his  roof,  and  made  his  home  typical 
of  a  full  and  noble  existence.  His  court,  after  all,  merely 
consisted  of  his  family  and  intimate  friends.  His  great  sources 
of  delight  were  not  pageants,  public  games  and  wonderful  spec- 
tacles, but  the  comforts  and  intellectual  charms  of  his  home. 
Contemporaries  emulated  each  other  in  describing  the  absolutely 
unique  character  of  Charlemagne's  house,  and  there  is  no 
historian  who  can  resist  the  pleasure  of  reproducing  that  de- 
scription, so  markedly  does  it  differ  from  that  of  the  great 
courts  of  the  kings  prior  to  the  "Carlovingian  dynasty.  It  is  a 
great  thing  to  have  perceived  the  originality  of  its  features  ; 
it  is  still  better  to  grasp  their  cause.  Owing  to  the  formation 
of  his  race,  Charlemagne  looks,  when  described  in  his  house, 
very  much  like  a  great  English  lord,  enlarged  to  gigantic 
proportions.  If  there  is  no  English  lord  who  is  fashioned 
on  such  a  scale,  it  is  because  there  are  none  who  own  such 
estates  ;  there  are  none  who  have  to  set  the  example  to  such 
great  lords  beneath  them;  there  are  none  who  have  Charlemagne's 
genius.  But  Charlemagne's  court  was  really  his  home,  and 
its  magnificence  was  of  that  kind  which  is  closely  allied  to  the 
useful.  The  most  characteristic  features  of  his  court,  which 
appear  in  his  piivate  and  domestic,  rather  than  in  his  public 
life,  are  similar  to  those  we  should  expect  to  find  in  the 
home  of  a  great  particularist  landowner,  who  has  become  the 
leader  of  his  nation. 

This  helps  us  to  understand  Charlemagne's  household,  with 
its  somewhat  homely  family  ways,  its  love  of  education  and 
its  scholarly  instincts,  its  positive  and  serious,  as  well  as  its 
artistic  tone;  it  is  nothing  more  than  the  home  of  a  great 
landowner. 

Now  that  we  have  seen  Charlemagne  as  he  lived  on  his 
estates  and  in  his  "  home,"  let  us  watch  his  mode  of  action 
with  regard  to  the  outer  world. 

In  the  first  place,  he  had  to  deal  with  the  great  beneficiaries 
who  were  dependent  on  his  domain,  great  beneficiaries  who  had 
perhaps  received  titles  (honores)  of  duke  or  count,  or  were 
plain  beneficiaries  without  titles.  Since  they  were  dependents 
of  his  domain  he  made  a  great  point  of  reminding  them  of  the 
conditions  under  which  they  held  their  benefices  and  honours, 
and  of  making  them  observe  them.  That  was  the  object  of 


CHARLEMAGNE  173 

most  of  the  edicts  lie  drew  up,  which  took  the  form  either  of 
general  regulations  or  of  special  provisions  for  special  occasions — 
most  of  them  are  known  as  capitularies. 

But  the  difficulty  was  to  get  these  powerful  personages  to 
see  reason.  To  achieve  that,  Charlemagne  had  only  two  re- 
sources to  fall  back  upon  : 

1.  An  embassy  of  trusted  men,  true  diplomatists,  the  missi 
dominici,  who  were  charged  to  bring  the  matter  to  as  happy 
a  conclusion  as  possible  by  methods  of  persuasion. 

2.  An  appeal  to  the  beneficiaries  of  the  same  rank,  to  the 
peers,  to  help  him,  in  the  first  place  by  persuasion,  but,  if  all 
else  failed,  by  force,  to  make  the  refractory  peer  observe  the 
duties  of  beneficiary  which  he  had  neglected.     No  doubt  those 
of  the  same  rank  were  only  too  ready  to  wish  their  equal  to 
submit  to  the  same  obligations  as  they  did,  and  not  to  be  the  only 
person  exempted  from  them.     That  constituted  the  mainspring 
and  the  whole  mechanism  of  the  "  trial  and  execution  by  peers." 

But  it  is  easy  to  see  that  these  two  methods  of  government 
were,  in  the  majority  of  cases,  limited  to  a  moral  influence 
exercised  as  much  as  possible  upon  men  who  were  really 
rendered  almost  totally  independent  by  the  size  and  power  of 
their  domains.  The  missi  dominici  were  far  from  always 
obtaining  what  Charlemagne  wished,  and  the  peers  of  the 
refractory  vassal  found  it  more  convenient,  as  often  as  not,  to 
make  common  cause  with  him,  and  try  to  win  exemption  from 
the  same  obligations  of  vassalage  as  he  was  opposing.  Charle- 
magne and  still  more  his  successors,  were  continually  making 
concessions  of  that  sort,  which  were  extorted  from  them  by  the 
vassals,  whom  an  overmastering  desire  for  independence  im- 
pelled to  join  hands  spontaneously  against  public  authority. 

In  this  point  too — and  it  is  worthy  of  note — Charlemagne's 
government  resembles  that  of  a  great  landowner,  whose  whole 
strength  lies  in  his  domain,  but  who,  once  he  is  outside  his 
own  property,  is  obliged  to  corne  to  terms  with  the  other  land- 
owners, who  follow  close  behind  him  on  the  road  to  sovereign 
emancipation,  which  he  was  the  first  to  reach. 

Therein  lies  the  explanation  of  another  feature  of  the 
capitularies  :  in  a  number  of  cases  they  are  merely  friendly 
resolutions — as,  for  instance,  the  capitularies  drawn  up  on 
the  Champ  de  Mai ;  and  the  capitularies  concerning  ecclesi- 


174  THE  FEUDAL  SYSTEM 

astical  matters ;  likewise  the  capitularies  which  modified 
in  some  degree  certain  customs  of  ancient  date,  known  as 
Barbarian  Laws.  In  the  framing  of  such  capitularies  as  these 
Charlemagne  did  not  take  the  same  part  as  he  did  in  drawing 
up  the  previous  ones,  in  which  case  he  acted  as  a  lord  with 
landed  estates  who  was  dealing  with  great  beneficiaries  who 
had  more  or  less  forgotten  their  obligations  towards  him, 
but  he  acted  as  president  of  the  General  Assembly  of  Frankish 
landowners  and  their  vassals,  or  as  chairman  of  occasional 
meetings  both  ecclesiastical  and'  secular.  He  was  a  supremely 
great  landowner,  who  presided  over  meetings  and  announced 
the  resolutions  that  had  been  passed  under  his  presidency. 

That  was  the  origin  of  that  parliamentary  tendency  which 
was  exhibited  by  the  government  in  a  marked  degree,  not  only 
after  the  accession  of  Pepin  and  Charlemagne,  but  in  the 
last  years  of  the  Merovingians,  when  the  system  of  vassalage 
had  caused  such  enormous  advances  to  be  made  towards  the 
emancipation  of  the  landowners  from  the  royal  truste. 
Whatever  power  the  prince  might  have  possessed  owing  to 
his  wealth  or  his  own  capacities,  he  was  aware  that  he  was  no 
more  than  primus  inter  pares. 

At  the  same  time  that  Charlemagne  was  trying  to  maintain 
his  rights  as  a  lord  of  landed  estates  in  relation  to  the  bene- 
ficiaries of  his  domains,  and  preside  over  meetings  where 
affairs  of  public  interest  were  discussed,  he  tried  to  prevent 
those  of  the  small  landowners  who  still  remained  independent 
from  being  absorbed  by  the  great  landowners.  In  so  doing 
he  followed  the  tradition  by  which  royalty  was  made  the 
protector  of  freemen  who  did  not  come  under  the  protection 
of  the  lords.  Other  capitularies  had  this  object  in  view  ;  but 
they  met  with  almost  as  little  success  as  those  which  were 
intended  to  enforce  the  obligations  of  the  beneficiaries.  In 
fact,  the  two  series  of  capitularies  aimed  at  putting  a  spoke 
in  the  wheel  of  the  feudal  movement — that  is,  the  advance  of 
the  power  of  the  great  landowners  and  the  protection  of  the 
small  proprietors  by  the  great  rather  than  by  the  king.  In 
this  matter  Charlemagne  was  in  the  position  of  the  man  who 
is  the  first  to  scale  the  citadel  of  power,  just  as  in  the  assault 
of  a  town  the  man  who  is  once  safely  in  the  citadel  turns  round 
upon  his  followers  and  says  to  them,  "  Come  no  farther ; 


CHARLEMAGNE  175 

there's  no  room  for  more.  Let  each  man  keep  his  rank  in  order 
of  battle."  It  is  a  case  of  what  we  should  nowadays  call 
"  shaking  competitors  off  the  ladder." 

Many  capitularies,  again,  simply  formulated  certain  prac- 
tices and  principles  which  had  already  been  observed  for  a 
considerable  time.  In  a  sense  they  were  the  written  expression 
of  customs  :  as,  for  instance,  the  capitularies  publishing  the 
Barbarian  Laws,  as  well  as  the  greater  part  of  the  capitularies 
dealing  with  military  service,  a  thing  which  it  was  no  easy 
task  to  alter,  as  we  know,  but  which  Charlemagne  attempted 
to  systematise.  It  is  clear  from  all  these  facts  that  the  capitu- 
laries are  far  from  being  the  expression  of  omnipotence. 

There  are  even  some  which  are  merely  memoranda,  personal 
notes  of  some  subject  that  was  being  studied — such,  for 
instance,  as  the  capitulary  bearing  this  question :  "  How 
comes  it  that  every  man  appears  so  reluctant  to  help  his  neigh- 
bour ?  "  Expressions  such  as  these  seem  to  reveal  the  thoughts 
of  a  man  who  was  pre-eminently  absorbed  by  public  affairs  : 
similar  expressions  might  be  found  in  the  notes  of  a  great 
landowner,  a  man  of  some  weight  in  public  matters. 

Such,  then,  was  his  action  in  the  outside  world,  such  was 
Charlemagne's  government  outside  his  own  domain,  on  national 
territory  in  times  of  peace.  In  looking  at  this  side  of  Charle- 
magne's life,  we  can  never  forget  that  his  position  was  essen- 
tially that  of  a  large  landowner  who  was  master  in  his  own 
house,  but  merely  influential  as  regarded  those  outside  it. 

It  was  Charlemagne's  personal  courage,  his  genius,  which 
was  able  to  use  that  influence  so  as  to  produce  such  wonderful 
results  :  all  historians  are  agreed  about  that.  It  is  very 
striking  how  few  changes  Charlemagne  introduced ;  but  he 
had  a  marvellous  power  of  knowing  how  to  take  the  lead 
successfully  in  things  which  he  could  not  alter.  That  explains 
why  this  excellent  government  came  to  an  end  immediately 
after  his  death. 

It  remains  for  us  to  see  what  course  of  action  this  great 
landowner  adopted  with  regard  to  war  or  from  the  military 
point  of  view. 

Setting  aside  the  men  who  belonged  to  him,  whom  he 
raised  from  his  own  domain  but  who  were  few  relatively  to 
the  whole  population,  and  setting  aside  the  small  landowners, 


176  THE  FEUDAL  SYSTEM 

who  were  still  free  from  vassalage  and  served  directly  under 
him  in  his  quality  of  king,  his  immediate  army  was  composed 
only  of  barons — that  is  to  say,  of  great  landowners  who  had 
their  own  army  of  vassals  at  their  command.  Therefore 
when  Charlemagne  summoned  his  army,  all  he  really  did  was 
to  summon  the  "  barons." 

The  vassals  took  an  oath,  in  virtue  of  their  tenure,  to  serve 
their  baron,  but  did  not  swear  directly  to  serve  the  king. 
Charlemagne  and  his  successors  tried  for  a  long  time  to  get 
every  vassal  to  swear  an  oath  directly  to  the  king  independently 
of  his  oath  to  the  baron.  It  was  a  long  and  very  difficult 
task.  A  series  of  compromises  were  at  first  accepted — as, 
for  instance,  the  oath  to  serve  the  baron  except  against  the 
king,  which  did  not  imply  a  promise  to  serve  the  king  even 
if  the  baron  did  not,  and  much  less  to  serve  the  king  against 
the  baron. 

The  expenses  of  the  armies  and  the  cost  of  the  war  were 
defrayed  by  the  combatants,  the  barons  and  their  vassals. 

It  was  impossible  for  the  combatants,  who  were  all  land- 
owners, to  be  other  than  mounted,  seeing  that  they  so  often  had 
to  go  very  long  distances  to  get  within  striking  distance  of 
the  enemy,  and  that  there  was  no  public  military  organisation. 
Everything  that  they  needed.,  and  all  the  people  they  required, 
had  to  follow  in  their  train.  Those  landowners  who  through 
some  immunity  or  another  were  exempted  from  military 
service,  especially  the  monasteries,  furnished,  instead,  chariots 
called  basterna.  They  were  chariots  covered  with  impene- 
trable skins  and  usually  drawn  by  oxen.  Such  and  such 
an  abbey — of  Corbie,  or  of  any  other  place,  for  instance — had 
to  contribute  fifty  oxen  with  their  harness.  Like  the  great 
captain  he  was,  Charlemagne  succeeded  in  getting  this  host 
of  people  to  follow  him ;  but  he  did  so  only  by  a  peculiar 
personal  gift,  similar  to  that  possessed  by  Caesar  or  Napoleon. 
His  fame  on  the  battlefield  is  well  known  :  legends  describe 
him  as  receiving  the  submission  of  cities  which  the  mere  news 
of  his  near  encampment  drove  distracted.  The  camp  was 
really  formed  only  by  degrees  as  the  barons  arrived  one  by 
one  at  the  appointed  place  in  sight  of  the  enemy,  or  at  any 
rate  at  the  frontier. 

But  Charlemagne's  success  in  being  able  to  raise  an  army 


CHARLEMAGNE  177 

of  this  description  often  enough  was  largely  due  to  the  wide- 
spread feeling  of  the  danger  of  invasion  to  which  Frankish 
territory  was  at  that  time  exposed :  all  these  wars  were  in  reality 
national  wars.  So  powerful  an  influence  had  this  feeling 
over  the  barons  that  they  soon  made  a  formal  stipulation 
that  they  would  not  follow  the  king  "  except  in  the  case  of 
a  national  war."  Moreover,  here  too,  as  well  as  in  peace,  we 
see  the  formation,  or  rather  the  growth,  of  the  parliamentary 
system,  which  had  its  birth  at  the  time  of  the  decadence  of 
the  Merovingians  :  there  was  the  same  necessity  as  in  peace,  for 
coming  to  a  parley  with  landowners  who  were  powerful,  able, 
and  eager  for  independence. 

The  barons,  then,  were  summoned  to  meet  on  the  Champ 
de  Mai,  and  sometimes,  too,  at  other  seasons ;  for  Charlemagne 
managed  to  get  them  to  serve  in  fifty-four  campaigns !  It 
was  no  longer  the  "  Field  of  March,"  but  the  "  Field  of  May," 
because,  since  the  army  was  entirely  mounted,  it  was  necessary 
to  defer  the  campaign  till  the  season  when  the  grass  began 
to  grow  again.  The  Chronicles  of  Eginhard  showed  us  how 
numerous  were  the  meetings  of  the  General  Assembly  before 
war,  and  near  the  hostile  frontier.  At  these  assemblies  Charle- 
magne deliberated  with  the  barons  on  the  proposed  expedition  ; 
and  the  faithful  historian  brings  out  very  clearly  that  the 
decisions  of  the  great  chief  were  not  made  without  the  support 
of  the  Assembly :  "  After  having  summoned  the  General 
Assembly  at  Worms,  Charles  resolved  to  make  war  upon 
Saxony  (772).  He  decided,  after  having  held  the  Assembly 
at  Worms,  to  march  against  the  Saxons  with  all  speed  (776), 
etc." 

So,  in  war  as  in  peace,  the  same  note  was  always  struck, 
the  same  system  of  government  was  employed  :  Primus  inter 
pares,  the  first  landowner  concerted  measures  with  the  rest. 

Under  this  new  system,  the  territory  which  the  Frankish 
band  and  the  Merovingian  army  had  brought  under  the  influ- 
ence of  the  particularist  family  was  tremendously  increased  ; 
there  were  three  extensions  of  territory  which  it  is  important 
to  distinguish  : 

1.  The  extension  among  the  Old  Germans.  Clovis,  Dagobert, 
and  others  had  begun  the  extension  on  that  side,  as  we 
saw  ;  Charlemagne  completed  it  chiefly  in  Bavaria  and  among 
12 


178  THE  FEUDAL  SYSTEM 

the  Lombards  ;  afterwards  among  the  Visigoths  in  Northern 
Spain.  It  is  interesting  to  note  under  this  head  that  the 
Franks  both  before  Charlemagne  and  under  him  carried 
not  only  their  arms,  but  also  something  of  their  social  organisa- 
tion, into  the  land  of  the  Old  Germans.  The  codes  of  the 
Bavarians,  the  Lombards,  the  Visigoths,  like  those  of  the 
Alemanni,  were  "  drawn  up  " — that  is  to  say,  put  into  working 
order  and  set  out  in  writing — at  the  instance  of  the  Frankish 
kings.  It  is  noteworthy  that  private  Frankish  institutions 
were  introduced  into  them  as  "far  as  possible.  For  instance, 
it  is  a  certain  fact  that  in  the  Code  of  the  Alemanni  was 
inserted,  mainly  under  the  influence  of  the  bishops,  a  regula- 
tion concerning  a  system  of  serfdom  not  unlike  that  organised 
by  the  Franks  on  their  estates.  There  is  nothing  unnatural, 
therefore,  in  finding  purely  Frankish  customs  among  the  Old 
Germans  who  had  been  conquered  by  and  absorbed  into  other 
tribes.  Historians  make  a  mistake  in  supposing,  as  they 
sometimes  do,  that  the  Old  Germans  themselves,  or  all  the 
German  tribes  in  general,  originated  institutions  which  really 
reached  them  only  through  the  Franks  and  Neo-Germans. 
There  is  no  difficulty  in  proving  that  the  systematic  organisa- 
tion of  serfs  and  vassals  on  the  Frankish  domain  became  weaker 
and  weaker  in  proportion  to  the  distance  from  its  original 
source — namely,  Austrasia — and  in  proportion  as  the  Frankish 
domination  was  less  marked  and  less  durable. 

Charlemagne's  arms,  then,  extended  the  territory  of  the 
particularist  family  among  the  Old  Germans,  as  far  as  the 
Ebro,  all  over  the  valley  of  the  Rhine  and  into  the  upper 
basin  of  the  Danube. 

2.  The  extension  among  non-Germanic  peoples.  Two 
peoples  should  be  noted.  In  the  first  place,  the  Slavs  :  the 
Carlovingian  army  could  do  no  more  than  get  booty  from 
them  (and,  in  the  camp  of  the  Avars,  the  pillaging  was  worthy 
of  Homer),  and  afterwards  stipulate  for  a  tribute,  for  they 
were  not  sedentary.  They  were  called  tributary  tribes.  In 
the  second  place,  the  Greeks,  or  rather  the  Romans  of  the  time 
of  the  decadence  of  the  empire,  in  Italy  properly  so  called  : 
among  them  Charlemagne  found  something  analogous  to  what 
Clovis  found  on  entering  the  Imperium  Romanum,  the  ancient 
centre  of  Celtic  Gaul,  which  had  remained  purely  Gallo-Roman. 


CHARLEMAGNE  179 

On  the  25th  of  December  in  the  year  800  the  Roman  people, 
over  whom  the  popes  had  for  a  long  time  held  the  position 
of  "  defenders  "  in  the  full  sense  of  the  term,  conferred  upon 
Charlemagne  the  title  of  Roman  emperor.  There  is  indeed 
something  magnificent  in  that  coronation  scene  of  Emperor 
Charles.  The  results  of  that  act  fell  far  short  of  the  expecta- 
tions of  the  people  of  Rome  and  the  sovereign  pontiff,  but 
it  was  the  expression  of  a  fact  of  immense  importance  :  the 
power  of  the  Romans  had  finally  disappeared  before  a  great 
landowner  sprung  from  the  shores  of  the  North  Sea,  and  it 
disappeared  before  the  power  of  the  private  estate  !  And, 
by  a  coincidence  which  is  worth  noting  in  so  far  as  it  helps 
to  emphasise  this  great  fact,  the  name  of  this  Northman  was 
the  very  one  by  which  those  emigrants  from  the  Gothic  peasants 
were  called,  those  founders  of  the  particularist  family  and  of 
the  independent  estate  :  he  was  called  "  Karl " — that  is  to 
say,  "  the  peasant,"  in  Gothic  language.1 

It  is  certainly  very  fine  to  see  the  triumph  of  the  par- 
ticularist family,  that  great  social  phenomenon,  expressed  so 
unexpectedly  in  the  coronation  of  Charlemagne  as  emperor. 

As  for  this  imperial  dignity,  it  had  no  effect  upon  the  social 
constitution  of  the  Franks.  The  feudal  system  under  Charle- 
magne and  his  successors  completed  the  structure  which  he 
had  begun  to  rear  upon  the  foundation  of  the  complete  inde- 
pendence of  the  estate. 

3.  The  expansion  among  the  Saxons.  This  reveals  an 
important  and  highly  characteristic  fact — namely,  the  deter- 
mined assault  of  a  mother  country  by  those  who  had  emigrated 
from  it,  and  its  surrender.  How  often  in  history  do  we  not 
read  of  former  emigrants  returning  in  a  similar  way  ! 

The  war  against  the  Saxons  is  extremely  interesting.  That 
tribe  of  humble  people  defended  its  independence  inflexibly. 
Every  time  it  was  defeated  it  bowed  its  head  for  an  instant. 
Its  leader,  Witikind,  took  refuge  in  Odin's  ancient  country,  in 
Denmark ;  then  he  returned,  after  the  manner  of  Odinid 
warriors,  to  rouse  the  people  to  fresh  action.  Every  time 
he  came  back,  they  began  war  anew  ;  every  time  he  went  away, 
they  ceased ;  but  at  bottom  they  never  yielded.  It  was  not 
long  before  that  Saxon  country  became,  as  we  shall  see,  the 

1  See  the  Chanson  de  Rig  in  the  Sagas. 


i8o  THE  FEUDAL  SYSTEM 

heart  of  Germany,  and  was  separated  from  France.  Charle- 
magne knew  the  Saxons  well  enough  not  to  wish  to  make 
them  adopt  altogether  the  organisation  of  the  great  Frankish 
estate,  which  was  the  product  of  the  rich  lands  of  Gaul.  With 
the  object  of  shutting  in  that  indomitable  people,  he  estab- 
lished bishoprics  in  the  country,  instead  of  great  lay  estates. 
The  power  of  the  bishops  presented  a  different  aspect  from 
that  which  a  purely  civil  and  political  domination  would  have 
done.  Besides,  Charles  relied  upon  the  fidelity  of  the  bishops 
more  than  upon  that  of  the  Secular  lords.  Finally,  he  was 
undeceived  about  benefices,  when  he  saw  all  of  them  gradually 
becoming  hereditary  ;  whereas  by  founding  bishoprics  he  was 
better  able  to  interfere  at  each  succession  so  as  to  get  his 
own  man  put  in,  someone  who  was  worthy  of  his  work. 

Charlemagne  probably  exercised  a  very  different  kind  of 
power  over  all  these  various  conquered  lands  from  that  which 
he  exercised  in  the  midst  of  the  Franks.  Over  the  other  tribes 
his  power  was  that  of  a  king,  though  it  took  different  forms. 

But  the  system  of  the  great  sovereign  estate  was  soon 
about  to  swamp  everything,  and  far  from  seeing  a  second 
Charlemagne  performing  the  functions  either  of  a  great  land- 
owner or  of  a  king  (according  to  the  land  under  his  sway), 
we  shall  see  nothing  but  a  republic  of  great  estates  which 
considers  sovereign  power  simply  as  one  of  the  natural  attributes 
of  private  property. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE  FEUDAL  SYSTEM 

PART  II— THE  DECLINE  OF  THE  CARLOVINGIANS 

/CHARLEMAGNE,  as  we  saw,  showed  his  genius  in  playing 
\J     the  part  of  the  leading  Frankish  landowner. 

He  had  to  be  content  with  that  role. 

Yet  everything  seemed  destined  to  bring  about  the  restora- 
tion of  the  antique  form  of  power,  with  him  at  its  head :  his 
genius,  his  immense  wealth,  his  army  for  the  national  defence 
which  included  all  the  troops  in  the  land,  his  military  fame, 
the  tribes  he  conquered,  which  were  accustomed  to  royal  domi- 
nation, finally  his  title  of  emperor.  But  all  these  numerous 
and  powerful  supports  were  as  nothing  in  the  face  of  the  re- 
sistance of  the  great  landowners,  who  were  absolute  masters 
on  their  own  estates.  Not  only  did  they  preserve  their  inde- 
pendence, but  it  is  clear  that  they  forced  Charlemagne's  hand 
more  than  once,  by  strength  of  numbers. 

So  there  is  nothing  astonishing  in  what  happened  at  the 
death  of  the  illustrious  Charles.  When  his  great  personality 
was  no  more,  the  illusion  faded,  and  the  old  state  of  things, 
which  had  really  never  ceased  to  be,  returned  :  each  of  the  lords 
with  landed  property  reigned  as  a  sovereign  on  his  own  estate. 
To  deal  with  foreign  affairs  they  leagued  themselves  together 
as  necessity  dictated,  just  as  independent  princes  would  do. 
There  was  no  one  who  could  take  the  place  of  the  mighty  leader 
who  had  had  the  gift  of  making  them  follow  him,  and  had  been 
aided  by  favourable  circumstances. 

This  inevitable  crisis  has  been  incorrectly  termed  the  decline 
of  the  Carlo vingian  Empire.  In  reality  the  empire  came  to  an 
end  with  Charlemagne,  and  there  was  no  decline  except  that 
of  the  family  and  the  estate  of  the  Carlovingians. 

181 


i82  THE  FEUDAL  SYSTEM 

It  is  easy  to  understand  their  decline.  It  was  inevitable 
that  the  first  of  Charlemagne's  successors  who  should  lack  his 
personal  gifts,  and  nevertheless  claimed  to  play  the  part  of 
leader,  should  fail  to  get  the  great  landowners,  or  even  a  few 
of  them,  to  follow  him,  except  by  winning  them  to  his  side  by 
fresh  concessions  of  land.  In  this  way  it  was  not  long  before 
the  family  of  Heristal  was  completely  despoiled  of  its  estates. 
But  the  influence  vanished  with  the  estates  ;  the  part  was 
played  out ;  the  Carlovingians  ceased  to  exist. 

The  first  concession  that  was  forced  upon  Charlemagne's 
successors  was  the  formal  and  explicit  abandonment  of  the  right 
of  reclaiming  the  benefices  at  the  death  of  their  occupant,  or  of 
shifting  honours — that  is  to  say,  the  titles  of  duke  and  count — 
from  one  domain  to  another.  This  was  the  official  confirmation 
for  good  and  all  of  the  heredity  of  all  estates  that  had  hitherto 
been  granted  only  in  usufruct.  It  had  previously  required 
great  cleverness  to  get  the  usufruct  extended  to  the  next  genera- 
tion. This  revolution  had  begun  a  long  time  before,  but  was 
consummated  by  a  capitulary  of  Charles  the  Bald,  drawn  up 
on  his  estate  of  Kiersy-sur-Oise  in  877. 

The  name  of  benefice — that  is  to  say,  the  enjoyment  of  an 
estate  for  life — naturally  fell  out  of  use,  and  the  name  of  -fief 
was  definitively  used  in  its  stead.  Fief,  then,  meant  the  land 
held  hereditarily  by  a  man  who  paid  homage,  swore  an  oath 
of  fealty,  and  bound  himself  to  perform  the  duties  of  a  vassal. 
Thence  came  the  name  of  feudalism  as  applied  to  the  system 
then  definitely  established. 

But  the  Capitulary  of  Kiersy  was  not  altogether  a  bad 
thing  for  Charlemagne's  family ;  after  all,  it  was  merely  the 
ratification  and  generalisation  of  a  fact  that  was  all  but  estab- 
lished, before. 

The  most  fatal  thing  for  that  family  was  the  necessity  of 
securing  the  adhesion  of  their  partisans  by  making  them  fresh 
gifts  of  land,  granting  them  portions  of  that  immense  domain 
which  Charlemagne  had  reserved  in  its  entirety,  as  the  foundation 
of  his  position. 

The  necessity  for  retaining  their  partisans  at  this  heavy  cost 
was  enormously  increased  by  the  dissensions  of  Charlemagne's 
descendants,  who  claimed  the  right,  each  one  on  his  own  account, 
of  carrying  on  the  part  played  by  their  famous  ancestor.  So 


DECLINE  OF  THE  CARLOVINGIANS         183 

much,   competition   must   have   led  to    any  amount   of   bar- 
gaining. 

The  concessions  of  land  belonging  to  the  reserve  domain 
did  not  cease  until  Robert  the  Strong  and  his  family  caused 
a]]  the  land  that  remained  in  the  possession  of  the  last  of  the 
Carlovingians  to  be  conceded  to  him,  little  by  little,  beginning 
by  the  duchy  of  France  and  ending  by  the  town  of  Laon  (from 
861  to  944). 

That  is  a  summary  of  the  "  Decline  of  the  Carlovingians  "  ; 
again  we  see  that  it  is  really  the  history  of  the  estate. 

The  great  fact  which  comes  into  evidence  at  that  time, 
and  is  very  significant,  is  the  thorough  isolation  of  each  of  the 
large  estates. 

The  isolation  of  the  estate — that  was  the  very  thing  which 
played  so  important  a  part  in  the  social  system  which,  gave 
rise  to  the  particularist  form  of  society  among  the  Scandinavian 
fishermen  and  the  Saxon  peasants,  and  the  very  same  thing 
occurs  among  the  great  Frankish  landowners.  After  so  many 
vicissitudes,  the  leading  characteristic  of  the  particularist  family 
does  not  belie  itself.  The  particularist  family  loves  the  isolation 
of  the  estate  ;  it  is  the  foundation  of  its  social  system.  So, 
after  the  disappearance  of  the  Merovingian  truste,  after  the 
disappearance  of  Charlemagne's  personality,  we  shall  again 
find  on  the  rich  lands  of  the  interior,  what  we  invariably  found 
on  the  shores  of  the  North  Sea  and  on  the  poor  lands  of  the 
Saxon  plain  :  namely,  that  each  domain  not  only  has  an  inde- 
pendent existence,  but  is  as  isolated  as  an  independent  state. 

That  is  the  marked  characteristic  of  the  feudal  system  at 
its  best  period,  between  the  end  of  Charlemagne's  rule  and 
the  first  advances  towards  power  of  the  Capetian  kings,  from 
814  to  1202.  That  is — to  restrict  it  still  further — the  character- 
istic of  the  tenth  and  eleventh  centuries,  which  form  the  centre 
of  this  period,  when  the  successors  of  Charlemagne  had  been 
formally  repulsed  (887,  the  deposition  of  Charles  the  Fat), 
and  the  predecessors  of  Philip  Augustus  had  not  yet  come 
forward  (1128,  Louis  vi.  and  the  commune  of  Laon). 

The  isolation  of  the  domains  cut  short  the  "  history  of  great 
events  "  during  the  tenth  and  eleventh  centuries,  whence  came 
the  idea  of  the  "  darkness  of  the  Middle  Ages  "  and  of  the  "chaos 
of  feudalism,"  an  allusion  to  the  isolated  life  of  the  little  feudal 


184  THE  FEUDAL  SYSTEM 

states.     But  that  is  a  totally  wrong  way  of  representing  things. 
There  is  no  darkness  and  chaos  except  in  the  minds  of  those 
who  are  ignorant  of  the  social  organisation  of  that  time,  who 
cannot  see  anything  clearly,  and  therefore  think  everything 
must  be  in  confusion  at  a  period  when  no  more  "  impressive 
historical  dramas  "  were  being  enacted.     The  saying,  "  Happy 
is  the  people  that  has  no  history,"  shows  a  better  understanding 
of  social  truth.     We  shall  verify  this  statement  by  taking  the 
case  of  the  peoples  who  lived  on  Frankish  territory  in  the  tenth 
and  eleventh  centuries.     Those  two  so-called  "  iron  "  centuries 
were  the  greatest  and  happiest  of  any.     The  next  chapter, 
containing  our  final  piece  of  evidence,  will  elucidate  this  point. 
First  let  us  consider  the  isolation  of  the  estates. 
The  institutions  of  royalty  and  of  empire,  which  we  picture 
to  ourselves  as  the  central  points  of  feudalism  in  the  Middle 
Ages,  because  we  only  look  at  them  in  the  light  of  their  restora- 
tion in  modern  times,  held  so  small  a  place,  effected  so  little 
in  the  social  organisation  on  which  the  life  of  feudalism  de- 
pended, that  those  two  great  titles  were  completely  abandoned 
when   Charlemagne's   family   became   extinct.     On   this   side 
of  the  Rhine  the  family  of  Robert  the  Strong,  who,  owing  to  his 
possession  of  the  Isle  of  France  and  of  Orleanais,  played  a 
part  analogous  to  that  of  Mayor  of  the  Palace  at  the  court  of 
the  Carlovingians,  on  several  occasions  spurned  the  title  of 
king,  which  it  could  easily  have  appropriated  ;  and  when  Hugh 
Capet  finally  decided  to  adopt  it,  it  did  not  as  a  matter  of  fact 
bring  with  it  the  submission  of  any  of  the  great  neighbouring 
landowners  :    his  power  remained  narrowly  confined  within 
his  own  estate.     On  the  other  side  of  the  Rhine  no  one  took 
the  title  of  emperor  when   the   descendants  of  Charlemagne 
disappeared  from  there  too  (from  899  to  936).     A  little  later 
it  was  decided  to  readopt  it,  but  with  the  precaution  of  not 
making  it  hereditary,  and  of  electing  as  emperors  the  great 
landowners  who  had  the  smallest  states,  in  order  to  completely 
nullify  the  effect  of  the  imperial  title. 

That  meant  the  real  triumph  of  feudalism  :  the  annihilation 
of  royalty  and  of  empire. 

The  result  is  that  it  is  difficult  to  follow  the  traces — and 
they  are  mere  traces — of  the  ancient  institution  of  monarchy 
or  empire  through  that  period.  There  are  few  historians  who 


DECLINE  OF  THE  CARLOVINGIANS         185 

do  not  get  discouraged  over  the  thankless  task  of  putting 
forward  as  a  succession  of  kings  and  emperors  a  series  of  persons 
who  had  no  kind  of  efficient  power. 

Royalty  and  empire  had,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  ceased  to 
exist,  and  even  the  titles  of  those  great  institutions  fell  into 
disrepute  and  oblivion.  Hugh  Capet  in  the  small  town  of 
Noyon  gave  himself  the  title  of  "  King  of  the  Gauls,  the  Bretons, 
the  Normans,  the  Aquitainians,  the  Goths,  the  Spaniards,  and 
the  Gascons,"  in  much  the  same  way  as  the  princes  of  Savoy 
bore  the  title  of  King  of  Cyprus  and  Jerusalem.  The  legendary 
colloquy  between  the  first  of  the  Capetians  and  Adalbert, 
Count  of  Perigord,  "  Who  made  you  a  count  ?  "— "  Who 
made  you  king  ?  "  has  remained  the  classical  expression  of 
the  state  of  things  at  that  time. 

We  have  no  need  to  be  further  convinced  that  the  spirit 
of  feudalism  depended  on  resistance  to  the  idea  of  royalty  : 
that  is  the  trait  which  predominates  in  our  mind  after  closely 
following  the  history  of  this  long  period,  Even  several  cen- 
turies after  the  time  when  Adalbert  of  Perigueux  could  say, 
"  Who  made  you  king  ?  "  Enguerrand  in.,  a  plain  lord  of  the 
manor  of  Coucy,  said  as  proudly,  "  Neither  king,  nor  prince, 
nor  duke,  nor  even  count  am  I :  I  am  the  sire  of  Coucy !  " 

We  must  not  allow  ourselves  to  be  deceived  by  the  ap- 
pearances of  the  hierarchic  system  of  organisation  of  feudalism. 
The  great  landowners  were  supposed  to  be  dependent  on  the 
king.  In  reality  they  only  depended  on  themselves.  The 
whole  trend  of  their  history  is  in  that  direction  :  from  the 
time  of  the  Merovingians  to  the  publication  of  the  Capitulary 
of  Kiersy,  what  else  did  they  do  but  emancipate  themselves 
from  royalty  ? 

It  is  said  that  during  this  period  feudalism  continued  to 
strengthen  its  organisation,  to  make  its  relations  more  definite, 
to  formulate  its  laws  :  but  what  really  became  better  organised, 
more  definite,  and  better  formulated,  were  the  means  for 
securing  the  increasing  independence  and  the  more  and  more 
complete  isolation  of  the  great  landowners.  That  was  un- 
doubtedly the  direction  taken  by  feudalism. 

Look  at  the  two  famous  Assemblies  of  Mersen  (847)  and 
Kiersy  (877)  :  they  were  the  last,  and  when  they  were  over 
no  one  any  longer  felt  the  same  desire  for  holding  conferences 


186  THE  FEUDAL  SYSTEM 

and  forming  coalitions,  but  each  man  went  of?  to  enjoy  the 
risks  and  dangers  of  his  independence.  The  stipulation  there 
made  was  that  the  landowners  should  only  follow  the  king 
against  a  foreigner,  and  that  they  should  judge  for  themselves 
whether  the  enemy  were  a  foreigner  ;  finally,  that  they  should 
choose  their  own  heirs. 

How  is  it,  then,  that  we  find  the  custom  of  doing  homage 
still  continuing  among  the  great  landowners  after  they  have 
reached  their  well-defined  position  of  absolute  independence  ? 

It  is  important  to  understand  this  point.  The  great  land- 
owners had  bound  all  their  tenants,  or  the  small  proprietors 
who  had  become  their  vassals,  to  their  domain  by  a  contract  of 
allegiance  and  homage.  They  held  it,  therefore,  of  extreme 
importance  that  the  contract  should  be  considered  binding  and 
immutable.  And  as  they  themselves,  at  the  time  when  their 
independence  was  not  yet  absolute,  had  accepted  the  contract 
between  themselves  and  the  king,  they  continued  to  make  it 
compulsory  in  order  to  prevent  the  principle  of  it  being  con- 
tested. But  there  was  this  enormous  difference  between  the 
case  of  the  great  landowners  and  the  small  proprietors  who 
were  bound  to  them  and  that  of  the  king  and  the  great  land- 
owners that  the  king  had  not  the  power  to  make  the  great 
landowners  observe  their  contract  of  allegiance  and  homage, 
whilst  the  great  landowners  used  their  power  for  the  very 
purpose  of  making  the  small  proprietors  observe  the  contracts 
of  allegiance  and  homage  they  had  made  with  their  overlords. 
There  are  plenty  of  facts  to  illustrate  this  point.  Consider, 
for  instance,  the  spirit  in  which  victorious  Rollo  accepted  the 
obligation  of  swearing  the  oath  of  fealty  and  of  paying  homage 
to  Charles  the  Simple  :  he  certainly  had  no  intention  of  following 
that  miserable  king,  but  he  applied  the  feudal  system  so  rigidly 
in  Normandy  that  his  duchy  there  soon  became  its  most  regular 
type.  Moreover,  since  the  landowners  simply  swore  to  follow 
the  king  in  the  case  of  national  war  only,  and  when  they  them- 
selves considered  it  national,  it  is  obvious  that  the  king  could 
expect  no  help  from  them  in  the  establishment  of  his  power 
within  his  dominions  :  and  so  the  contract  amounted  to  nothing 
at  all. 

The  real  situation  is  revealed  in  hundreds  of  ways. 

During  the  tenth  and  eleventh  centuries  we  find  the  king 


DECLINE  OF  THE  CARLOVINGIANS         187 

absolutely  confined  within  his  domain,  where  he  simply  played 
the  same  part  as  the  great  landowners  did  on  their  own  estates. 

He  used  his  strength  to  force  the  small  proprietors  to  do 
their  duty  towards  him  as  his  dependents  :  that  was  the  cause 
of  those  numberless  small  wars  round  Paris. 

He  attempted  to  get  back  into  his  power  the  right  of  choosing 
successors  for  the  domains  that  reverted  to  him,  not  in  his 
quality  of  king  but  of  relation :  that  brought  about  the  Bur- 
gundian  war. 

The  weakness  of  his  position,  too,  is  visible  even  when 
he  played  the  part  of  a  private  man ;  for  more  than  once 
he  was  unable  to  gain  his  point  without  securing  the  alliance 
of  some  great  neighbouring  landowner  more  vigorous  than 
himself.  I  say  by  securing  an  alliance,  not  by  calling  upon 
the  landowner  to  perform  his  feudal  service.  The  Count  of 
Vermandois  and  the  Duke  of  Normandy,  whom  it  pleased 
to  come  and  fight  for  him,  stated  very  clearly  that  they  did 
not  do  so  because  they  were  bound  to,  but  simply  out  of  good- 
will and  in  virtue  of  a  private  contract :  in  fact,  they  were 
not  national  wars.  And  the  moment  that  the  Count  of  Ver- 
mandois and  the  Duke  of  Normandy  retired,  the  king  was 
defeated. 

This,  then,  is  all  tha£  the  bond  between  the  king  and  the 
great  landowners  meant :  nothing. 

In  addition  to  military  service,  which  was  reduced  to  what 
I  have  just  described,  there  were  two  obligations  to  which 
the  vassal  was  bound  by  the  contract  of  allegiance  and  homage  ; 
they  had  no  more  effect  than  the  former  upon  the  great  land- 
owners and  the  king.  The  two  obligations  were  to  aid  the  king 
with  counsel  when  he  asked  for  it,  and  to  come  to  the  trial 
by  peers  convoked  by  the  suzerain — that  is  to  say,  to  come 
to  the  trial  of  those  who  were  in  the  same  position  of  vassalage 
as  themselves  relatively  to  the  king.  Now,  I  beg  everyone 
of  sense  to  consider  whether  the  king  would  not  think  twice 
before  asking  advice  of  such  embarrassing  personages  as  those 
great  dignitaries.  And  as  for  the  trial  by  peers,  it  is  obvious 
that  the  vassal  who  considered  himself  strong  enough  to 
neglect  his  duties  towards  the  king,  would  have  arranged 
beforehand  to  avoid  appearing  before  the  peers ;  he  was 
prepared  to  repulse  the  king  and  the  peers  by  force.  More- 


i88  THE  FEUDAL  SYSTEM 

over,  the  peers  on  their  side  were  inclined  to  absolve  him 
and  forsake  the  king  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten.  These  facts 
constantly  recurred. 

Thus,  out  of  the  three  feudal  obligations  called  service, 
fiance,  and  justice,  or  else  ost,  cour,  and  plaid  (exercitus, 
curtis,  placitum),  there  was  not  a  single  one  which  was  seriously 
fulfilled  by  the  great  landowners  in  their  relations  to  the  king, 
for  the  very  good  reason  that  the  great  landowners  were  so 
powerful  that  there  was  no  authority  strong  enough  to  force 
them  to  fulfil  their  obligations.  So,  when  we  speak  of  the 
organisation  of  the  feudal  system,  we  must  take  care  to  apply 
to  the  great  landowners  the  fable  of  the  fly  which  passes  through 
the  meshes  of  the  spider's  web  by  reason  of  its  size.  In  theory, 
the  system  was  organised  so  as  to  maintain  a  certain  relation 
between  the  great  landowners  and  the  king  :  we  saw  the  reason 
for  that  just  now.  In  reality,  the  system  only  worked  effect- 
ively in  the  case  of  those  below  the  great  landowners  :  history 
proves  it. 

Feudalism,  then,  in  spite  of  the  existence  of  the  title  of 
royalty,  was  really  a  republic  of  great  domains,  which  were 
absolutely  independent  of  royalty  and  of  one  another. 

There  was  no  other  bond  of  cohesion  between  the  great 
landowners,  except  that  of  the  peerage — that  is  to  say,  that 
they  promised  the  king  to  help  their  peers.  But  this  obliga- 
tion, like  that  of  helping  the  king  himself,  was  limited  to  the 
case  of  national  war,  and  was  equally  ineffective  for  the  same 
reasons.  It  was  only  another  form  of  the  obligation  to  follow 
the  king  in  the  same  case.  Supposing  that  one  of  the  peers 
was  obliged  to  defend  himself  against  a  foreign  army  without 
waiting  for  the  king,  the  peers  were  supposed  to  go  to  his 
assistance  of  their  own  accord. 

Once  that  the  complete  independence  of  the  great  landowners 
in  relation  to  the  king  and  to  each  other  is  thoroughly  under- 
stood, the  history  of  the  Middle  Ages  up  to  the  twelfth  century 
appears  quite  normal  in  its  development.  Each  great  land- 
owner acted  like  a  sovereign  in  his  own  domain,  and  made 
what  special  and  temporary  associations  he  could.  It  was 
the  system  of  the  particularist  family  over  again,  used  for  the 
benefit  of  the  great  landowners,  and  exhibiting  the  same  charac- 
teristics of  independence  and  isolation  on  the  estate,  and  the 


DECLINE  OF  THE  CARLOVINGIANS         189 

same  use  of  transitory  associations  for  special  objects,  according 
as  necessity  demanded. 

All  this,  then,  is  simply  another  chapter  in  the  continuous 
history  of  the  particularist  family,  and  a  direct  development 
of  its  institutions  :  on  the  shores  of  the  North  Sea  it  created 
the  estate  out  of  narrow  strips  of  land,  and  obtained  some 
support  from  seacoast  fishing,  and  that  estate  became  of 
sovereign  importance  ;  on  the  barren  lands  of  the  Saxon  plain 
the  particularist  family  created  the  small  estate  and  made  it 
of  sovereign  power ;  finally,  on  the  rich  lands  on  both  banks 
of  the  Rhine  it  created  the  large  estate  and  made  it  of  sovereign 
power. 

I  took  the  left  bank  of  the  Rhine  as  the  scene  of  this  develop- 
ment because  in  France  we  are  more  familiar  with  that  region, 
but  exactly  the  same  thing  took  place  on  the  right  bank. 

I  mentioned  above  that  the  titles  of  king  and  emperor 
met  with  very  much  the  same  fates  :  the  title  of  king  was 
retained  on  the  left  bank  because  of  the  memory  of  Clovis,  who 
lived  in  Neustria  ;  the  title  of  emperor  remained  on  the  right 
bank  because  of  the  memory  of  Charlemagne,  who  lived  in 
Austrasia  by  preference,  and  extended  his  conquests  chiefly 
into  Saxony,  Bavaria,  and  Eastern  Germany. 

And  now  that  we  once  more  see  before  us  the  political 
organisation  peculiar  to  the  particularist  family,  hostile  to 
every  kind  of  system  of  public  control  which  is  not  its  own 
creation,  now  that  we  see  before  us  the  sovereign  domain  as 
surely  as  when  we  saw  it  at  its  birth  in  Norway  and  in  the 
Saxon  plain,  let  us  return  to  a  question  which  is  connected 
with  that  of  the  expansion  and  evolution  of  the  particularist 
type,  the  question  of  means  of  transport.  Though  the  means 
of  transport  changed,  they  still  exhibited  one  of  the  same 
characteristics,  which  was  the  outcome  of  isolation — namely,  a 
paucity  of  organised  means  of  transport  and  a  mediocrity  in 
the  ordinary  means  used.  Instead  of  walking,  or  riding  on  a 
farm-horse,  methods  of  locomotion  which  in  the  Saxon  plain 
took  the  place  of  sailing  which  was  used  in  Norway,  people 
now  drove  in  cars  drawn  by  oxen,  or  rode  on  war-horses :  the 
change  was  due  to  the  difference  between  rich  lands  and  poor, 
the  large  estate  and  the  small.  The  Frankish  estate,  as  we 
said,  was  rich  and  military  in  contrast  to  the  Saxon  estate  : 


THE  FEUDAL  SYSTEM 

therefore  people  drove  in  cars  drawn  by  oxen  instead  of  going 
on  foot,  and  rode  war-horses  instead  of  farm-horses.  But  in 
spite  of  the  superiority,  from  a  technical  point  of  view,  of  the 
two  Frankish  means  of  transport,  the  part  played  by  the  means 
of  transport  was  practically  the  same  in  everyday  life  :  each 
estate  isolated  its  inhabitants. 

Let  us  go  back  a  little  way  in  the  history  of  our  means  of 
transport,  starting  from  the  Saxon  plain  and  the  Frankish  band. 

Just  as  the  ancient  political  system  and  the  new  existed 
at  first  side  by  side  on  Frankish  soil,  and  then  took  each  its 
own  road,  so  the  ancient  system  of  transports  and  the  new  first 
went  on  side  by  side,  and  then  each  took  its  own  course. 

The  Merovingians  received  the  Roman  roads  as  part  of  their 
inheritance,  as  they  did  the  forms  of  Roman  government.  They 
mainly  used  the  roads  for  marching  the  soldiers  to  the  conquest 
of  the  country  and  for  keeping  it  under  their  domination. 

Gregory  of  Tours  states  that  it  was  the  estates  and  churches 
bordering  on  the  Roman  roads  which  suffered  in  the  transit  of 
the  soldiers  who  had  been  levied  en  masse,  and  that  explains 
the  tendency  exhibited  by  large  landowners,  as  well  as  by 
monasteries,  to  procure  domains  in  out-of-the-way  places  that 
were  called  "  wild." 

The  Roman  roads  enabled  the  Merovingian  to  keep  in  easy 
touch  with  his  counts  in  each  city.  But  just  as  the  Merovingian 
in  reality  inherited  only  the  forms  of  Roman  government,  so 
he  did  not  make  more  than  a  superficial  use  of  the  "  Roman 
road  "  :  he  did  not  possess,  any  more  than  did  the  Romans 
of  the  decadence,  what  made  that  institution  a  living  force 
among  the  Romans.  The  result  was  that  the  Roman  roads  were 
neglected,  and  became  daily  worse  and  worse. 

Brunehaut  won  herself  a  fame,  which  has  lasted  from 
century  to  century,  by  taking  the  trouble  to  repair  some  broken 
portions  of  those  famous  roads.  Brunehaut's  highways  have 
been  multiplied  in  the  imagination  of  posterity. 

These  roads  were  supposed  to  be  kept  up  by  means  of  tolls. 
The  Merovingians  and  their  counts  were  very  anxious  to  keep 
up  the  tolls  ;  they  did  more,  they  tried  several  times  to  increase 
them.  But  I  need  scarcely  say  that  the  money  collected  at 
the  toll  gates  was  not  used  for  the  maintenance  of  the  roads. 
I  even  make  a  slight  mistake  in  speaking  of  money,  for  the 


DECLINE  OF  THE  CARLOVINGIANS         191 

tolls  were  probably  deductions  made  in  kind  from  the  merchan- 
dise that  passed  by.  Now,  is  it  likely  that  these  deductions  in 
kind  escaped  being  consumed  on  the  spot  or  being  used  in  the 
count's  small  local  traffic  ? 

But  the  Frankish  landowner  revolted  against  the  govern- 
ment of  the  Merovingians  when  the  question  of  tolls  arose,  as  he 
did  on  all  questions  of  taxes.  He  used  the  same  method  he 
always  used,  and  succeeded  in  getting  immunities  granted 
him  :  the  merchandise  he  carried  was  exempted  from  the  toll 
dues.  Such  immunities  abound  among  the  papers  left  by  the 
Merovingians. 

He  could  even  do  better  :  he  could  obtain  the  right  of 
collecting  the  tolls  of  such  and  such  a  bridge,  town,  etc.,  for 
his  own  benefit.  The  Merovingians  gave  numbers  of  such 
grants,  and  the  Carlovingians  gave  all  that  remained  to  be 
given. 

But  when  protestations  were  made  on  all  sides,  injunctions 
were  issued  from  the  palace  to  the  counts,  from  time  to  time, 
forbidding  them  to  create  any  more  new  tolls. 

In  the  end  the  same  thing  happened  to  the  tolls  as  to  the 
other  sovereign  dues  :  the  great  landowners  first  got  exemption 
from  them,  then  appropriated  them,  and  levied  them  upon 
the  public.  They  made  the  toll  dues  at  the  entrance  to  towns, 
at  river- crossings,  at  harbours,  etc.,  into  rights  attached  to  the 
land,  to  the  domain,  like  everything  else. 

The  great  landowners,  who  were  very  anxious  not  to  pay 
tolls,  and  were  content  to  receive  them,  were  not,  however, 
very  zealous  in  keeping  up  the  roads.  It  was  not  only  that 
a  policy  of  neglect  seemed  to  them  economical,  but  that  the 
interests  of  the  estate  did  not  impel  them  to  do  otherwise. 
We  know  how  the  vast  estates  were  divided  into  an  infinite 
number  of  small  tenures,  each  of  which  answered  to  the  needs 
of  one  family.  Public  means  of  transport,  then,  were  in  nowise 
necessary  to  the  working  and  to  the  life  of  the  domain ;  but, 
furthermore,  it  was  essential  to  the  interests  of  the  domain 
that  nothing  should  go  out  of  it.  That  was  the  condition  of 
absolute  independence,  of  solitary,  self-contained  life. 

"  Commerce,"  says  Pigeonneau,  "  was  almost  entirely 
suspended  during  two  centuries.  Society  under  the  feudal 
system  was  organised  in  such  a  way  that  each  of  the  little 


192  THE  FEUDAL  SYSTEM 

states  of  which,  the  kingdom  of  France  was  composed  was 
self  -sufficient ,  and  was  obliged  to  depend  on  its  neighbours 
to  the  least  possible  extent.  Rye,  wheat,  barley,  and  vegetables, 
which  formed  the  staple  food,  were  grown  everywhere  ;  even 
vines  were  cultivated  in  regions  where  they  could  only  produce 
mediocre  results,  and  where  they  ceased  to  be  grown  when  com- 
mercial facilities  were  increased — that  is  to  say,  in  Normandy, 
in  Brittany,  and  even  as  far  as  Picardy  ;  every  peasant,  serf, 
or  freeholder  had  his  poultry-yard,  his  pig-sty,  his  stable, 
which  was  large  enough  to  hold  a  few  goats  and  one  or  two 
cows. 

"  In  return  for  a  small  payment,  the  cattle  were  allowed  to 
graze  in  the  meadows,  on  the  heaths,  or  in  the  copses,  which 
formed,  so  to  speak,  the  common  property  of  the  fief.  The 
lord  usually  fed  enormous  flocks  of  sheep  there,  whose  wool 
the  women  spun  and  used  for  weaving  clothes.  The  woods 
belonging  to  the  lord  provided  wood  for  carpentry  as  well  as 
for  burning.  The  tithes  (in  kind),  the  field  rents,  the  dues 
which  the  lords  and  the  churches  levied  on  the  cultivator, 
and  which  gradually  accumulated  in  the  barns  and  cellars  of 
the  castle  or  of  the  abbey,  provided  the  lord  of  the  manor,  his 
family  and  servants,  the  abbot  and  his  monks,  with  food  ;  they 
also  formed  the  food-supply  in  times  of  war,  when  the  peasants 
were  obliged  to  take  refuge  in  the  castle  ;  they  were  a  reserve 
against  a  bad  harvest. 

"  Far  from  thinking  of  depriving  himself  of  these  precious 
resources  for  the  benefit  of  his  neighbours,  the  lord  had  only 
one  care,  to  prevent  his  men  from  exporting  the  produce  of  his 
fief,  especially  such  as  was  indispensable  for  the  defence,  security, 
and  actual  life  of  the  population  which  he  employed — corn, 
drinks,  cattle,  horses,  wool,  flax,  hemp. 

"  The  fief  had  its  mill,  its  wine-press,  its  common  oven,  like- 
wise its  common  storehouses. 

"  It  was  the  same  with  industry  as  with  agriculture.  Each 
fief  tried  to  produce  the  commodities  and  the  raw  material 
necessary  for  alimentation,  clothing,  and  transport ;  each  fief 
aimed  at  having  its  own  manufacturers  for  producing  the  prime 
necessaries — its  carpenter,  its  mason,  its  potter,  its  smith,  its 
armourer,  its  weaver,  its  tailor."  1 

1  Pigeonneau,  Histoire  dv,  Commerce  de  la  France,  vol.  i.  p.  91,  etc. 


DECLINE  OF  THE  CARLOVINGIANS          193 

The  fate  of  the  towns,  which,  after  all,  lived  only  by  commerce, 
can  be  imagined.  They  gravitated  cumbrously  round  the 
country  fiefs,  and  were  held  of  so  little  account  in  the  organi- 
sation of  the  land  that  historians  find  it  impossible  to  say  what 
went  on  within  them,  how  they  were  governed,  the  kind  of 
life  their  inhabitants  led,  and  the  kind  of  occupations  they 
pursued. 

This  was,  indeed,  the  complete  triumph  of  the  rural  domain  ; 
and  what  a  complete  contrast  with  the  state  of  things  under 
the  Gallo-Eomans,  when  everything  radiated  from  the  town  ! 
The  Frankish  emigrant  had  brought  about  a  revolution  in  the 
social  system  ! 

We  now  understand  how  the  ample  liberty  of  movement 
in  the  Roman  world  and  its  extraordinary  facilities  for  com- 
munication were  replaced  in  the  ordinary  and  logical  course 
of  things,  and  not  in  a  process  of  decay,  by  the  isolation  of  the 
domains  and  the  absence  of  means  of  communication. 

In  the  economic  organisation  of  the  Frankish  estate  it  is 
clear  that  there  was  no  place  for  the  town,  the  ordinary  small 
market  of  the  neighbourhood  ;  everyone  provided  for  his  every- 
day wants  for  himself  on  his  own  estate. 

But  that  accumulation  of  produce  on  the  premises  to  which 
we  alluded  just  now  gave  rise  in  the  end  to  a  surplus  stock 
which  the  owner  was  glad  to  exchange,  after  a  certain  time, 
for  whatever  he  lacked  in  the  midst  of  that  abundance  of 
necessaries,  or  even  for  novel  commodities  from  abroad  which 
might  tempt  him.  Consequently,  a  quite  peculiar  centre  of 
commerce  took  the  place  of  the  town  at  this  period  of  the 
formation  and  domination  of  the  feudal  system — namely,  the 
Fair. 

Just  as  in  the  isolation  of  the  steppe,  markets  for  the 
wandering  tribes  were  held  at  long  intervals  at  places  to  which 
religious  pilgrimages  were  made,  so  in  the  isolation  of  the 
estates,  with  their  stable  particularist  families,  fairs  were 
organised  near  places  which  were  frequented  at  definite  times 
for  religious  purposes. 

The  type  of  these  feudal  fairs  was  the  famous  fair  "  du 

Landit  "  (low  Latin,  indicium  =  fixed,  determined),  held  on  the 

estate  of  the  Abbey  of  St.  Denis ;  and  before  that,  the  fair  of 

St.  Denis  held  at  the  same  place  and  subsequently  transferred 

13 


194  THE  FEUDAL  SYSTEM 

to  Paris,  which  was  quite  near.  The  fair  of  Troyes  in  Cham- 
pagne figured  beside  these  fairs  in  the  first  rank. 

It  is  interesting  to  find  that  all  these  fairs  tried  to  traffic 
with  the  north,  which  had  hitherto  remained  very  much  cut 
off  from  all  the  commercial  centres.  The  success  of  the  fairs 
of  St.  Denis  and  Champagne  was  due  to  the  fact  that  there 
were  good  lines  of  approach  to  them  from  the  north.  The 
south,  with  its  abundance  of  recherche  produce  cleared  the 
most  distant  heights  round  the  basin  of  the  Mediterranean  in 
order  to  come  as  far  as  the  great  plains  which  communicated 
with  the  north. 

The  fairs  of  St.  Denis  and  of  Troyes  in  Champagne  were 
the  rendezvous  for  people  coming  from  all  parts  of  Europe. 
Beside  the  wines  and  oil  of  the  south  were  seen  the  honey  and 
wax  of  Armorica,  the  cloths  and  madder-root  of  Neustria,  the 
metals  of  Spain  and  England,  the  furs  of  the  north,  the  wools 
of  Friesland,  spices,  pepper,  silk  and  cotton  fabrics,  jewels, 
enamels,  gold  and  silver  work  from  the  east,  which  came  via 
the  ports  of  the  Mediterranean,  or  more  rarely  by  the  route 
of  the  Danube,  and  were  brought  chiefly  by  the  Jews,  called 
Syrians  ;  parchments  sought  after  by  the  monasteries,  etc.1 

The  upheavals  caused  by  attending  the  fairs,  which  were 
only  held  very  occasionally,  did  not  in  the  least  disturb  the 
isolation  of  the  estate.  The  feudal  lords  did  great  service  to 
the  fairs  by  withdrawing  the  usual  tolls  in  the  case  of  goods 
going  to  the  fairs,  and  by  being  responsible  for  the  safety  of 
the  merchants  and  their  merchandise  while  they  crossed  their 
fiefs. 

It  would  seem  at  first  sight  as  if  the  transit  of  goods  and 
men  in  times  of  war  must  have  interfered  far  more  with  the 
isolation  of  the  estate  :  in  Charlemagne's  suite,  as  we  saw, 
immense  files  of  chariots  drawn  by  oxen  and  war-horses  went 
as  far  as  the  Ebro  and  the  Volturno,  half-way  up  the  Danube 
and  as  far  as  the  Elbe  :  in  Spain,  Italy,  Germany,  and  Saxony. 
But  we  know,  too,  that  after  Charlemagne's  death  the  great 
landowners  put  stringent  regulations  upon  those  enterprises, 
and  solemnly  stipulated  that  they  would  not  follow  the  king 
except  in  expeditions  which  they  considered  of  national  im- 
portance, or,  to  put  it  plainly,  which  they  considered  would 
1  Pigeonneau,  Histoire  du  Commerce  de  la  France. 


DECLINE  OF  THE  CARLOVINGIANS         195 

really  be  to  their  own  interest.  Consequently,  we  no  longer 
find  the  kings  in  the  tenth  and  eleventh  centuries  undertaking 
expeditions  like  those  of  Charlemagne,  however  much  they 
may  have  desired  to  do  so. 

We  have  now  thoroughly  established  the  Independence  and 
Isolation  of  the  great  estates. 

It  remains  for  us  to  consider  what  were  their  results  :  whether 
good  or  bad.  From  them  we  shall  be  able  to  form  an  opinion 
as  to  the  results  produced  by  feudalism  at  its  zenith — that  is 
to  say,  in  the  tenth  and  eleventh  centuries. 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE  FEUDAL  SYSTEM 

PART  III— THE  ZENITH  OF  FEUDALISM 

WE  have  seen  that  as  soon  as  the  particularist  form  of  society 
won  the  day  in  the  rich  lands  of  the  interior,  the  same 
phenomenon  as  we  observed  on  the  fish-frequented  shores  of 
Norway  and  on  the  barren  moors  of  the  Saxon  plain  unmistak- 
ably presented  itself — namely,  the  isolated  domain,  resembling 
in  its  absolute  independence  a  sovereign  state.  Only,  among  the 
Franks  it  was  a  great  manorial  estate,  whereas  with  the  seacoast 
fishermen  of  Norway  it  was  an  estate  composed  of  tiny  strips 
of  land,  while  with  the  Saxon  peasants  it  was  a  small  estate. 

The  direct  effect  of  the  isolation  of  the  seigneurial  domain 
upon  commercial  transports  was  to  reduce  them  very 
largely  :  that  phenomenon  too  was  the  same  as  occurred  in 
Norway  and  in  the  Saxon  plain,  but  in  this  matter,  as  in  others, 
the  proportions  were  necessarily  different,  as  in  one  case  the 
estates  were  large  and  almost  like  so  many  countries,  and  in 
the  other  small  and  scattered. 

So  much  we  know  from  the  preceding  chapters.  It  remains 
for  us  to  investigate  the  military  transports  :  there  again  we 
shall  come  across  some  startling  phenomena. 

As  soon  as  the  all-powerful  domains  had  secured  absolute 
isolation,  the  military  transports  had  to  submit  to  the  same 
law  as  the  commercial  transports  :  they  were  reduced  to  the 
simplest  possible  form. 

Military  organisation  then  assumed  two  forms.  Both  forms 
were  new ;  they  were  employed  simultaneously  and  differed 
from  each  other  very  much.  There  was  the  military  organisa- 
tion for  the  defence  of  the  domain,  and  the  military  organisation 
for  expeditions  outside  the  domain. 

196 


THE  ZENITH  OF  FEUDALISM  197 

Let  us  begin  by  taking  the  expeditions  outside  the  domain  : 
their  relation  to  the  question  of  transports  is  more  obvious  ; 
besides,  their  organisation  is  less  unlike  the  military  organisa- 
tion with  which  we  are  already  acquainted.  At  the  very 
outset,  however,  we  shall  discover  that  we  have  to  do  with 
a  system  very  different  from  that  which  Charlemagne  adopted 
on  his  great  expeditions. 

Under  Charlemagne  the  term  of  military  service  exacted  from 
the  owners  of  allodial  estates — that  is  to  say,  the  independent 
men — and  from  the  beneficiaries  was  three  months,  reckoned 
from  the  moment  of  arrival  at  the  rendezvous  in  face  of  the 
enemy.  All  the  time  it  took  to  reach  the  rendezvous  across 
the  great  Frankish  Empire  did  not  count  in  the  term  of 
service.  At  the  end  of  the  three  months,  if  the  land- 
owners or  beneficiaries  consented  to  continue  the  war,  it 
was  no  longer  carried  on  at  their  expense,  but  at  that  of 
the  king  or  emperor.  In  fact,  Charlemagne  fought  almost 
continuously  from  the  spring  to  the  autumn :  he  made 
amends  to  the  barons  and  their  followers  for  the  prolonga- 
tion of  their  term  of  service  by  gifts  of  the  booty  and  land 
which  they  had  captured,  and  which  also  served  to  defray  his 
own  expenses. 

But,  under  Charlemagne's  incapable  successors,  the  land- 
owners and  beneficiaries,  who  were  no  longer  distinguished 
from  each  other  and  were  equally  possessors  of  fiefs,  seem  to 
have  unanimously  reduced  the  obligatory  term  of  feudal 
military  service  to  forty  days.  And  these  forty  days  were 
reckoned  from  the  day  of  departure  from  home,  not  from  the 
day  of  arrival  in  face  of  the  enemy.  Now,  since  the  sovereign 
who  summoned  his  vassals  to  arms  was  not  in  a  position  to 
offer  them  hopes  of  getting  anything  like  the  same  amount  of 
booty  on  his  small  expeditions  as  they  got  under  Charlemagne, 
in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  the  vassals  left  him  at  the  end  of  forty 
days,  quietly  turned  their  backs  on  the  enemy,  and  took  the 
road  home  to  their  domain. 

There  is  certainly  a  considerable  difference  between  these 
two  laws  or  customs,  and  especially  between  the  two  ways  of 
carrying  them  out :  on  the  one  side,  it  was  really  a  case  of 
almost  six  months  of  military  service  each  year  ;  on  the  other, 
it  was  almost  absolutely  impossible  to  keep  a  force  against  the 


I98  THE  FEUDAL  SYSTEM 

enemy  for  more  than  a  month  when  the  time  necessary  for 
reaching  the  scene  of  battle  was  deducted. 

The  phenomenon  that  then  presented  itself — namely,  that 
feudal  independence  tended  to  reduce  military  service — seems 
quite  contrary  to  what  we  usually  imagine  to  be  the  case. 

However,  it  really  contains  nothing  surprising.  In  the 
first  place,  it  was  the  natural  and  logical  result  of  independence. 
It  was  also  the  continuation  of  a  chain  of  facts  which  we  have 
watched  being  shaped  according  to  a  definite  law,  and  which 
resulted  from  causes  now  known  to  us.  Let  us  pick  up  the 
chain  at  a  few  points  : 

1.  Did  we  not  notice  that  as  soon  as  the  Franks  provided 
themselves  with  domains,  they  abandoned  the  soldier's  pro- 
fession from  the  time  of  the  establishment  of  the  Merovingians 
at  Paris  ? 

2.  Did  we  not  find  that,  sooner  than  yield  to  the  levies 
en  masse,  they  allowed  themselves  to  be  fined  ? 

3.  Did  we  not  see  how  they  saved  almost  the  whole  of  the 
working  class  from  military  service  by  making  them  return 
to  the  position  of  serfs,  from  which  the  majority  of  them  had 
escaped  owing  to  the  spread  of  Christian  ideas  concerning 
emancipation  ? 

4.  Did  we  not  see  how  they  saved  even  the  freemen  from 
military  service  by  using  an  artifice  which  changed  them  from 
landowners  into  "  guests  "  and  beneficiaries  ? 

5.  When  the  widespread  use  of  this  means  of  exemption 
failed  to  suppress  altogether  the  national  army,  and  it  was 
necessary  to  recognise  the  need  of  subjecting  the  beneficiary 
to  military  service,  did  we  not  see  them  step  in  between  the 
king,  the  chief  of  the  army,  and  their  beneficiaries,  and  make  it 
a  fixed  law  that  the  beneficiaries  should  never  follow  the  king 
except  under  them,  with  them,  and  at  their  command  ? 

6.  Did  we  not  see  how  they  declared  at  the  Assembly  of 
Mersen,  in  847,  that  they  would  not  take  part  in  campaigns 
except  in  the  case  of  wars  which  they  considered  of  national 
importance  ? 

With  such  precedents,  it  was  not  extraordinary  that  in  the 
following  century — the  tenth  century — a  practice,  which  was 
the  expression  of  the  general  tendency  and  was  looked  upon 
on  all  sides  as  an  established  law,  should  lead  to  the  absolute 


THE  ZENITH  OF  FEUDALISM  199 

refusal  of  the  vassals  to  serve  more  than  forty  days,  reckoned 
from  the  day  of  departure  for  the  expedition. 

And  it  should  be  observed  that  it  was  not  only  the  great 
feudal  lords,  the  king's  chief  vassals,  who  adopted  that  attitude, 
but  all  the  vassals  of  every  rank  in  relation  to  all  suzerains. 
There  was  no  vassal  so  small  or  so  great  who  was  bound  to 
perform  more  than  forty  days'  military  service  at  his  own 
expense.  The  necessity  of  defraying  his  expenses  beyond  that 
time,  if,  moreover,  he  consented  to  continue  fighting,  limited 
the  sovereign's  enterprises  considerably,  and  all  the  more  so 
because,  if  he  was  not  paid  day  by  day,  the  vassal  might  turn 
his  horse's  head  homewards  at  a  moment's  notice  :  it  was 
lawful  for  him  to  refuse  his  sovereign  credit ;  there  was  nothing 
to  oblige  him  to  serve  for  the  prospective  profits  of  war,  however 
certain  they  might  be.  In  short,  the  sovereign  was  at  the 
mercy  of  the  goodwill  of  his  vassals  when  the  forty  days  had 
expired. 

But  warfare  was  not  reduced  only  by  the  curtailment  of  the 
term  of  service.  The  expeditions  were  further  reduced  by 
other  causes. 

The  vassal  did  not  shut  his  eyes  and  march  blindly  after 
his  suzerain  against  no  matter  whom.  We  are  led  to  believe 
that  he  found  numbers  of  plausible  excuses  for  not  fighting 
against  the  man  in  question,  pleading  his  position,  rights,  and 
titles  ;  for,  in  order  to  put  an  end  to  these  refusals,  a  set  form, 
which  was  then  very  rarely  used,  for  the  oath  of  fealty  and 
homage,  was  subsequently  introduced,  and  became  more  and 
more  widely  used :  it  is  known  as  liege  homage  as  opposed  to 
simple  or  plain  homage.  By  liege  homage  the  vassal  pledged 
himself  to  follow  his  sovereign  in  war  "  against  every  creature 
capable  of  life  and  death  "  :  contra  omnem  creaturam  qucs 
possit  vivere  et  mori ;  contra  omnes  homines  et  feminas  qui 
possunt  vivere  et  mori  ;  "  contre  tous  ceulx  qui  peuvent  vivre 
et  mourir."  From  formulas  such  as  these  it  is  easy  to  see  that 
the  suzerain  spent  no  end  of  time  and  trouble  in  trying  to  put 
a  stop  to  all  the  subterfuges  of  the  vassal. 

For  instance,  we  find  that  military  expeditions  were  further 
reduced  by  the  discussion  of  the  proposed  war. 

There  was  a  third  cause  of  reduction.  The  vassal  himself 
often  had  vassals  whom  it  was  not  his  duty  nor  within  his 


200  THE  FEUDAL  SYSTEM 

rights  to  lead  to  support  his  suzerain  in  war,  because  the  con- 
tract he  had  made  with  them  was  framed  to  that  effect.  The 
rear-vassals,  when  they  were  in  that  position,  only  followed  the 
vassal  in  his  own  personal  wars  :  that  meant  the  deduction 
of  so  many  men  from  the  suzerain's  army.  Or  else  there  were 
rear-vassals  whom  the  vassal  was  not  bound  to  send  to  the 
suzerain's  service  unless  the  suzerain  paid  their  expenses  from 
the  first  day  and  during  the  whole  time  of  the  expedition  : 
that  was  another  kind  of  obatacle  to  military  enterprises. 
Finally,  there  were  some  rear- vassals  who  were  not  bound  to 
fight  even  for  the  vassal  except  in  the  case  of  the  defence  of 
the  fief  ;  they  could  not  be  required  to  leave  the  fief.  These 
are  all  instances  of  a  new  cause  of  the  reduction  of  military 
enterprises  :  the  diminution  of  the  number  of  recruits. 

In  short,  we  have  discovered  three  causes  of  the  reduction 
of  wars — in  the  tenth  century  from  the  decline  of  the  Car- 
lovingians,  and  in  the  eleventh,  when  feudalism  was  in  full 
vigour.  The  three  causes  were  :  the  abbreviation  of  the  term  of 
military  service,  the  discussion  of  the  proposed  war  and  of  the 
enemy's  rights  by  those  bound  to  fight,  the  diminution  of  the 
number  of  men  bound  to  join  the  army. 

The  conclusion  drawn  is  that  feudal  armies  were  nothing 
more  than  a  few  squads  of  soldiers,  and  feudal  wars  were  merely 
off -hand  fights.  That  was  the  real  fact  of  the  matter,  except 
in  the  case  of  great  dangers  which  affected  the  whole  people, 
really  national  wars,  when  everyone  came  out  from  all  sides, 
of  his  own  accord,  to  fight  the  enemy.  "  The  occasion  of  a  war 
with  Normandy  was  the  only  time  when  it  was  possible  to  raise 
a  strong  army,"  says  Boutaric,  professor  at  the  ficole  des 
Chartes.  "  In  his  private  quarrels  the  king  was  supported  by 
a  mere  handful  of  men."  l 

With  so  restricted  a  number  of  combatants,  it  was  obviously 
not  necessary  to  keep  military  rolls  ;  but,  at  the  end  of  the  period 
we  are  studying  (the  tenth  and  eleventh  centuries),  when  the 
Capetians  began  to  foresee  the  restoration  of  royal  power,  and 
made  the  first  census  of  their  military  forces,  the  following 
interesting  entries  were  made  :  "  The  Count  of  Champagne 
at  the  end  of  the  twelfth  century  had  at  his  command  2030 
knights,  and  he  sent  only  12  knight-bannerets  to  the  king. 

1  Institutions  militaires  de  la  France,  pp.  113,  114. 


THE  ZENITH  OF  FEUDALISM  201 

The  Duke  of  Brittany  had  166  knights  bound  to  serve  in  the 
army  :  he  sent  only  40  of  them  to  the  king.  The  king,  as 
Duke  of  Normandy  (Normandy  was  confiscated  by  Philip 
Augustus  in  1204),  had  581  knights  bound  to  military  service  : 
his  barons  had  more  than  1500.  And  observe  that  the  majority 
of  knights,  even  those  who  were  bound  to  serve  in  the  army, 
could  not  be  forced  to  leave  the  manor  or  the  province  as  the 
case  might  be."  l  Is  not  the  meaning  of  the  fact  we  have 
stated  clear  enough  ?  Are  we  not  sufficiently  convinced  of 
the  steady  reduction  of  military  service  by  triumphant 
feudalism  ?  Philip  Augustus,  the  first  king  to  attempt  to 
make  a  change  in  this  state  of  things,  by  adopting  measures 
which  we  shall  mention  presently,  made  the  following  list  of 
the  military  contingents  due  to  him  from  his  vassals  :  "  Bre- 
tagne,  40  knights  ;  Anjou,  35  ;  Flanders,  42  ;  Boulonnais,  7  ; 
Ponthieu,  16 ;  Saint-Pol,  8 ;  Artois,  18 ;  Vermandois,  24 ; 
Picardy,  30  ;  Parisis  and  Orleans,  89  ;  Touraine,  55."  2 

It  happens  that  we  have  only  to  do  with  kings  here,  but 
that  is  because  the  documents  concerning  them  had  the  privi- 
lege of  being  preserved,  thanks  to  the  glamour  which  royalty 
acquired  in  later  years  ;  but  the  other  feudal  lords  can  be  judged 
by  the  Capetians.  For  it  must  be  well  understood  that  it  was 
not  merely  in  their  quality  of  kings  that  the  Capetians  received 
such  small  contingents,  but  also  in  their  quality  of  feudal 
landowners.  The  opposition  to  military  service  which  we 
have  observed  was  directed  by  all  the  vassals  uniformly 
against  all  the  suzerains. 

The  extremely  restricted  number  of  combatants  that  any 
suzerain  of  any  rank  could  put  upon  the  field,  gives  us  some 
idea  of  that  historical  personage,  frequently  little  understood, 
the  knight.  It  is  clear  that  under  such  conditions  a  knight, 
a  single  knight,  was  a  man  of  importance  :  he  formed,  in  his 
own  person,  a  considerable  part  of  the  military  force.  What 
was  known  as  the  ost,  the  army,  was  estimated  by  the  number 
of  knights,  just  as  nowadays  it  is  estimated  by  the  number  of 
regiments.  A  few  more  knights  on  one  side  than  on  the  other 
could  make  a  serious  inequality  in  the  chances  of  war.  Granted 
that,  the  personal  valour,  strength,  and  ability  of  the  knight 

1  Boutaric,  Institutions  militaires  de  la  France,  pp.  191,  192. 

2  Ibid.  p.  192. 


202  THE  FEUDAL  SYSTEM 

were  of  great  importance  in  action.  The  appearance  on  the 
field  of  battle  of  a  knight  who  was  strong  enough  to  hold  his 
own  against  three  or  four,  was  as  good  as  a  reinforcement 
which  could  decide  a  battle. 

And  since  strength  had  to  make  up  for  number,  since  a  hand- 
ful of  fighting  men  might  be  in  the  midst  of  a  numerous  hostile 
population,  and  since  each  of  them  was  a  unit  of  war  whose 
loss  was  palpable,  it  was  imperative  that  the  knight  should  be 
stoutly  protected  by  a  suit  of  defensive  armour,  and  that  wher- 
ever he  went  he  should  take  refuge  within  it,  just  as  a  small 
and  efficient  garrison  can  defend  itself  behind  the  walls  of  a  small 
fortress,  and  can  hold  out  against  a  superior  force  of  the  enemy. 

We  now  understand  the  reason  for  the  two  indispensable 
accompaniments  of  the  feudal  military  system  :  armour,  literally 
a  land  of  portable  fortress  belonging  to  the  knight ;  and  the 
stronghold  where  he  lived,  a  kind  of  stationary  suit  of  armour. 
When  a  man  was  behind  one  or  other  of  those  defences,  he  was 
worth  something  ;  without  them  he  would  have  been  "  soundly 
thrashed  "  on  the  field  or  in  his  own  house  by  the  first  band  of 
soldiers  that  happened  to  come  up. 

There  is  nothing  to  be  surprised  at,  then,  in  the  wonderful 
growth  of  fortresses,  or  rather  fortified  houses  on  feudal  soil. 
The  stronghold  was  a  necessary  part  of  the  equipment  of  every 
soldier  in  this  reduced  military  system  ;  it  is  not  in  any  way 
a  proof  of  anarchy.  Nor  is  there  anything  to  wonder  at  in 
those  double  suits  of  chain  armour,  those  heavy  "  coats  and 
doublets  of  mail  "  which  sometimes  made  it  necessary  for  the 
knight  who  wore  them  to  be  lifted  on  to  his  "  huge  war-horse  " 
by  main  force.  He  was  indeed  prepared  for  anything  in  his 
cuirass  :  in  a  land  army  he  played  the  part  performed  nowadays 
by  an  iron-clad  or  a  torpedo  boat  in  a  naval  force. 

The  strength  that  a  few  renowned  knights,  or  even  a  single 
one,  contributed  to  an  expedition,  was  no  mere  fairy-tale, 
whatever  may  be  said  to  the  contrary.  Those  famous  warriors, 
Godfrey  of  Bouillon,  Bohemond,  Tancred,  Eichard  Cceur-de- 
Lion,  nicknamed  the  "Carpenter  "  because  of  the  skill  he  showed 
in  cutting  the  enemy  to  pieces  with  blows  from  his  axe,  are 
not  mythological  personages. 

They  are  no  more  legendary  than  the  knight-errant  who 
swore  an  oath  and  was  sanctioned  by  the  benediction  of  the 


THE  ZENITH  OF  FEUDALISM  203 

Church  to  go  forth  and  rescue  the  oppressed,  and  who  in  his 
own  person  constituted  a  public  force. 

Lastly,  it  is  clear  enough  that  if  each  knight,  errant  or  other- 
wise, isolated  or  in  a  band,  constituted  in  his  own  person  a 
military  force  of  that  importance,  he  must,  like  each  of  our 
regiments  and  our  pieces  of  artillery,  have  been  "  served  " — that 
is  to  say,  accompanied  by  a  whole  staff  of  non-combatants, 
who  provided  him  with  all  the  necessaries  of  life  and  rendered 
him  assistance  before  and  after  a  battle.  Thus  there  were  squires 
to  carry  part  of  the  arms ;  and  men  on  foot  or  on  horseback 
to  compose  the  knight's  escort,  to  supply  his  wants  and  perform 
the  services  of  an  ambulance  if  he  were  wounded  in  battle. 

We  must  now  pass  on  to  the  second  military  organisation 
we  mentioned  at  the  beginning  of  the  chapter  :  the  organisa- 
tion for  the  defence  of  the  domain,  and  not  for  expeditions 
abroad.  But  the  point  we  must  bear  in  mind  is  that  military 
expeditions  had  been  reduced  in  an  extraordinary  degree  when 
feudalism  was  at  its  height  in  France — that  is,  during  the 
greater  part  of  the  tenth  and  eleventh  centuries. 

That  such  was  the  case  is  a  further  proof  of  the  tendency 
towards  the  isolation  of  the  estate  and  its  independence. 

We  find  things  reversed  when  we  leave  military  service 
abroad  and  come  to  the  defence  of  the  domain.  Here  we  find 
that  military  service  is  increasing  and  augmenting.  It  is  here 
a  question  of  the  domain,  so  we  must  pay  great  attention  to  it. 

We  have  already  mentioned  the  fortress,  which  bore  the 
same  relation  to  the  defence  of  the  domain  as  the  armour  did 
to  the  military  expedition.  The  castle  served  not  for  the 
defence  of  the  knight  alone,  but  for  that  of  the  whole  domain 
and  its  staff.  It  was  composed  of,  or  rather,  surrounded  by, 
enormous  palisades  or  great  walled  enclosures  behind  which, 
when  the  first  signal  of  alarm  was  given,  the  people  on  the 
estate  took  refuge,  bringing  with  them  everything  from  their 
homes  which  they  could  carry  or  convey.  The  castle  was 
usually  situated  in  such  a  way  as  to  protect  as  large  an  area  of 
the  domain  as  possible. 

We  also  noticed  before  that  the  vassals  mustered  in  far 
larger  numbers  to  defend  the  domain  than  to  join  in  military 
expeditions,  since  they  were  all  bound  to  defend  the  domain, 
whilst  many  of  them  were  not  obliged  to  join  an  expedition. 


204  THE  FEUDAL  SYSTEM 

But  the  double  security  afforded  by  the  fortress  and  by  the 
armed  assistance  of  all  the  vassals  was  not  considered  enough 
for  the  domain.  A  new  and  interesting  phenomenon  now 
appears,  and  continues  to  develop  in  the  tenth  and  eleventh 
centuries,  and  reaches  its  consummation  at  the  beginning  of  the 
twelfth — I  mean  the  enrolment  of  tenant  cultivators  (tenanciers 
roturiers)  for  the  defence  of  the  domain. 

This  is  a  very  complicated  question,  but  I  will  try  to  deal 
with  it  briefly. 

A  tenant  cultivator  (tenancier  roturier)  was  a  man  who  was 
not  a  serf  but  a  freeman,  who  could  not  be  retained  on  the 
estate  against  his  will,  and  who  had  had  a  piece  of  land  granted 
him  in  consideration  of  some  special  service,  usually  manual 
service,  or  of  the  payment  of  rent — not,  at  all  events,  in  return 
for  military  service  :  he  was  therefore  distinguished  both  from 
the  serf,  because  he  was  free,  and  from  the  vassal  or  noble,  because 
he  did  not  receive  his  tenure  in  return  for  military  service. 
If  he  was  sometimes  called  by  the  name  of  vassal  he  was  im- 
properly so  called,  and  the  mistake  was  probably  due  to  the 
fact  that  he  was  in  the  position  of  a  freeman.  His  classical 
name  in  the  Middle  Ages  was  "homme  de  pooste,  homo  de  potcstate, 
a  man  under  authority,"  because  he  was  under  the  authority, 
under  the  public  control,  of  the  lord,  whilst  he  himself  exercised 
no  power  of  that  kind  in  his  tenure,  unlike  the  suzerain  and  the 
vassal,  who  had  powers  over  their  own  fiefs  ;  but  he  was  not  the 
property  of  the  lord,  like  the  serf ;  he  could  not  be  said  to  be 
de  possessione  or  in  possessionibus.  As  for  the  name  roturier, 
he  acquired  it  by  virtue  of  his  profession,  ruptuarius  :  though 
he  was  an  absolutely  free  man,  "  he  used  to  break  up  (rompait) 
the  glebe,"  he  worked  his  land  himself  (rupture,  roture). 

Now,  where  did  this  tenant  cultivator  come  from  ? 

We  know  that  he  must  have  been  rare  up  to  that  time, 
since  on  the  one  hand,  under  the  influence  of  the  Franks,  serfdom 
had  been  extended  so  as  to  include  nearly  the  whole  of  the 
working  class;  while,  on  the  other,  in  the  feudal  movement,  free- 
men had  generally  been  infeudated  in  consideration  of  military 
service.  Hitherto,  we  have  found  that  serfs  and  vassals  repre- 
sented the  two  subordinate  ranks  almost  exclusively.  Whence 
came  this  growth  of  tenant  cultivators,  who  increased  so  rapidly 
in  the  tenth  and  eleventh  centuries  that  at  the  beginning  of 


THE  ZENITH  OF  FEUDALISM  205 

the  twelfth  they  formed  far  the  greater  mass  of  the  popula- 
tion ? 

This  wonderful  growth  came  from  one  of  the  greatest  and 
most  pacific  events  in  history  :  the  constant  emancipation  of 
individual  serfs.  The  tenant  cultivators  were  emancipated  serfs. 

Historians  have  shown  the  most  extraordinary  stupidity  in 
the  way  in  which  they  have  misconceived  the  tenth  and  eleventh 
centuries,  the  period  in  which  this  significant  event,  this  revolu- 
tion with  its  far-reaching  results,  was  silently  accomplished. 
"  Serfdom  had  disappeared  from  our  country  by  the  eleventh 
century,"  says  Leopold  Delisle  in  his  well-known  essay  on  the 
Condition  de  la  classe  agricole  en  Normandie  au  moyen 
age.1  Therein  lies  the  greatness  of  these  so-called  "  iron " 
centuries  ;  in  France  they  were  the  centuries  during  which  the 
liberty  of  the  individual  was  pacifically  established  for  ever. 

This  gives  us  some  idea  of  what  was  going  on  in  those  isolated 
domains  whose  history  seems  so  dark  and  shadowy.  What  was 
going  on  there  ?  The  domain  was  bringing  about  changes  in 
everything  all  round.  After  having  set  free  the  great  land- 
owners, it  gradually  liberated  all  the  men  under  them,  the 
vassals  and  serfs.  In  the  struggle  against  the  old  Romano- 
barbarian  system  of  government,  against  the  Merovingian 
truste,  they  had  been  compelled  to  give  up  a  portion  of  their 
liberty  for  a  time  in  so  far  as  they  were  only  granted  land 
belonging  to  the  "  land  of  service  "-—that  is,  the  estate  which 
served  the  "  land  of  mastership."  But  though  the  domain, 
that  the  vassal  or  serf  possessed  under  the  particularist 
system,  was  dependent  on  another  domain,  yet  it  led  him 
straight  towards  independence.  Did  we  not  see  just  now  how 
the  vassal  eased  the  bonds  which  his  suzerain  put  upon  him  and 
gradually  reduced  his  term  of  military  service  ?  The  movement 
went  on  even  among  the  working  class,  and  the  serf  gradually 
reduced  the  amount  of  the  agricultural  or  manual  labour  he 
owed  his  suzerain :  he  obtained  his  freedom,  and  became  a 
tenant  cultivator  instead  of  a  serf. 

In  order  to  free  himself  gradually  from  military  service,  the 
vassal  relied  on  his  domain,  on  his  fortress,  on  his  complete  levy 
of  rear-vassals,  which  enabled  him  to  brush  aside  the  claims 
and  dispute  the  commands  of  his  suzerain.  Even  when  he 

1  See  Preface  to  La  Condition  de  la  classe  agricole  en  Normandie  au  moyen  dge. 


206  THE  FEUDAL  SYSTEM 

actually  refused  to  fulfil  his  feudal  obligations,  the  means  for 
turning  him  out  of  his  estate  were  so  limited  that  at  the  end  of 
the  eleventh  century  it  was  the  universally  accepted  custom 
merely  to  make  him  pay  a  fine  for  that  capital  offence.1  In 
the  same  way  the  serf,  in  order  to  free  himself  gradually  from 
the  obligation  of  agricultural  labour — that  is,  from  forced  labour 
— relied  on  his  domain,  on  that  "  settlement,"  that  "  home," 
that  servile  mansus  where  he  was  his  own  master,  where  he 
worked  for  his  own  profit ;  there  he  grew  rich  by  improving 
his  methods  of  agriculture  by  the  lessons  he  learned  from  the 
great  landowner  for  whom  he  did  forced  work,  till  he  reached 
the  position  of  being  able  to  pay  his  lord  for  the  land  which  he 
held  instead  of  doing  work  for  him.  In  this  way  he  became 
a  tenant  cultivator,  homme  de  pooste — that  is  to  say,  he  paid 
rent  instead  of  being  a  serf  bound  to  do  forced  labour. 

In  this  way  the  vassal  with  his  moderate-sized  domain 
and  the  serf  with  his  small  domain  were  first  protected  by 
the  great  domain  of  the  suzerain,  and  then,  when  they  had 
helped  him  to  his  freedom,  themselves  became  liberated  from 
him  by  imperceptible  degrees. 

And  three-quarters  of  this  change  took  place  during  the 
tenth  and  eleventh  centuries. 

Now,  it  was  easy  to  find  a  place  in  the  system  of  military 
service  for  this  tenant  cultivator  without  raising  him  to 
noble  rank  and  though  he  paid  otherwise  for  his  tenure.  ' 

How  is  it  that,  while  the  vassal  withdrew  from  military 
service  as  far  as  possible,  the  tenant  cultivator,  on  the  contrary, 
entered  it  ?  There  is  nothing  contradictory  in  that.  The 
vassal  reduced  his  military  service  only  in  the  case  of  expeditions 
outside  the  fief,  and  the  tenant  cultivator  came  to  his  assistance 
in  the  defence  of  the  domain,  not  in  other  battles.  The  same 
idea  always  predominated  :  everything  was  concentred  upon 
the  estate.  No  history  has  ever  been  more  focussed  upon  one 
point  than  that  of  the  particularist  form  of  society.  "  At  the 
end  of  the  eleventh  century,"  says  Boutaric,  "  public  law 
allowed  each  lord  to  claim  the  help  of  his  tenant  cultivators. 
They  might  not  be  summoned  except  for  the  defence  of  the  fief. 
All  the  lawyers  of  the  Middle  Ages  are  unanimous  on  this 
point."  2 

1  Boutaric,  p.  137.  2  Ibid.  p.  144. 


THE  ZENITH  OF  FEUDALISM  207 

The  first  evidence  we  have  that  the  people  were  summoned 
to  take  up  arms  for  the  defence  of  the  estate  appears  in  the 
history  of  two  famous  institutions  of  the  tenth  and  eleventh 
centuries  :  the  Peace  of  God,  and  the  Truce  of  God. 

The  Peace  of  God  forbade  any  attack  to  be  made  upon 
persons  or  things  consecrated  to  religious  worship  ;  upon  weak 
persons,  women,  old  men,  children ;  upon  defenceless  peasants. 
It  forbade  anyone  to  carry  off  domestic  animals,  mares,  foals 
of  less  than  six  months  ;  to  burn  the  houses  of  peasants.  The 
man  who  did  not  restore  what  he  had  taken  or  repair  the  damage 
he  had  done  within  a  fortnight  was  condemned  to  pay  twice 
their  value. 

The  Truce  of  God  ordered  the  suspension  of  hostilities  against 
anyone  or  anything  at  certain  times  of  the  year,  and  on  certain 
days  of  the  week — as,  for  instance,  from  the  first  Sunday  in 
Advent  to  the  week  after  Epiphany,  from  the  first  day  of  Lent 
to  the  week  after  Whitsuntide,  and  throughout  the  year  from 
Wednesday  evening  till  Monday  morning. 

Such  were  its  stipulations,  subject  to  changes. 

The  Peace  of  God  was  declared  at  the  local  councils  of 
Charroux  in  989  ;  of  Limoges  in  994  ;  of  Poitiers  in  the  year  1000. 
"  The  princes  and  lords  swore  to  observe  all  the  clauses  of  the 
Peace  of  God  ;  King  Robert  established  it  throughout  his  states 
and  even  in  Burgundy  and  at  Lyons.  In  1033  almost  the  whole 
of  France  had  accepted  the  Peace  of  God."  1 

As  for  the  Truce  of  God,  it  seems  to  have  had  its  birth 
at  Elne,  in  Roussillon,  in  1027.  Subsequently  it  was  declared 
at  the  Council  of  Tuluges  in  1041.  "  It  first  appeared  in  the 
south,  and  before  the  end  of  the  eleventh  century  was  established 
in  the  north  of  France  and  in  England."  2 

The  tenant  cultivators,  the  serfs  who  were  already  freed, 
or  those  even  who  were  only  on  the  way  to  freedom,  took  up 
the  defence  of  the  domain  for  the  purpose  of  maintaining  the 
Peace  and  the  Truce  of  God  against  those  who  tried  to  violate 
them. 

The  clergy,  who  had  taken  such  an  active  and  splendid 
part  in  the  promotion  of  the  Peace  and  the  Truce  by  means  of 
assemblies — wrongly  called  synods,  however,  for  all  the  influ- 
ential laymen  were  present  at  them — the  clergy,  I  repeat,  took 
1  Boutaric,  pp.  167,  168,  z  Ibid.  p.  169. 


208  THE  FEUDAL  SYSTEM 

a  no  less  important  part  in  the  maintenance  of  the  two  institu- 
tions by  force  of  arms.  They  marched  at  the  head  of  the 
peasants  to  sustain  and  direct  their  courage.  Though  unarmed, 
they  went  in  the  face  of  danger,  stirring  the  armed  people  to 
follow  them.  A  story  that  belongs  to  a  slightly  later  date  (1111), 
but  which  is  only  a  late  repetition  of  what  occurred  at  that 
time,  will  give  an  idea  of  the  noble  activity  of  the  clergy.  "  The 
Castle  of  Puiset  was  very  strong.  Several  assaults  upon  it  had 
been  repulsed  .  .  .  and  not  one  of  the  assailants  dared  attempt 
to  scale  the  wall.  One  of  the  priests  who  had  come  with  his 
parishioners  devoted  himself  to  the  attempt.  His  name  is 
unknown.  Those  present  only  noticed  that  he  was  bald, 
bare-headed,  and  unarmed.  Protecting  himself  with  a  plank, 
which  served  as  a  shield,  he  clambered  up  the  wall  to  the 
assault.  On  reaching  the  palisade  he  lowered  himself  beneath 
the  loopholes,  and  thus  shielded  from  blows,  worked  away  to 
loosen  a  stake.  He  signed  to  the  soldiers,  who  hastened  up 
with  hatchets  and  picks.  The  palisade  gave  way ;  they  made 
their  way  into  the  castle."  1 

The  Peace  and  the  Truce  of  God,  which  were  magnificent 
and  original  institutions  and  very  much  to  the  credit  of  the 
tenth  and  eleventh  centuries,  have  nevertheless  been  turned 
to  their  discredit :  people  have  insisted  on  regarding  them  as 
a  proof  that  the  lords  of  the  manors  spent  their  time  in  plunder- 
ing and  massacring  their  tenants,  and  that  it  became  imperative 
to  check  and  control  them. 

That  is  absolutely  absurd. 

1.  In  the  first  place,  it  would  have  been  madness  in  a  lord 
to  amuse  himself  by  devastating  his  own  domain  :  besides,  he 
used  not  to  make  war  upon  his  own  men. 

2.  It  was  the  lords  themselves,  in  conjunction  with  the 
clergy,  who  combined  to  promote  the  establishment  of  the  two 
institutions  at  those  meetings  which  have  been  wrongly  called 
synods. 

3.  The  fine  incurred  for  violating  these  institutions  was  paid 
to  the  bishop  or  count — that  is  to  say,  to  a  lord  of  the  manor  ; 
thus  it  is  not  a  case  of  the  strong  oppressing  the  weak,  but  of  the 
strong  protecting  the  weak  and  representing  their  interests. 

But  to  clear  up  all  doubts,  I  will  mention  the  kind  of 
1  Bcmtaric,  pp.  200,  201. 


THE  ZENITH  OF  FEUDALISM  209 

wars  against  which  the  Peace  and  Truce  of  God  were  directed. 
The  south  of  France  had  scarcely  been  affected  by  feudalism 
as  we  saw.  The  military  service  of  the  nobility,  regular  mili- 
tary service — chivalry,  in  short — had  not  been  organised  there 
as  a  common  obligation.  The  question  of  defence  had  yet  to  be 
solved.  Furthermore,  that  part  of  the  country  had  been  but 
little  inhabited  by  particularists,  and  was  still  in  the  state  of 
disorder  and  decay  in  which  the  Romans  and  barbarians  had 
left  it.  Many  of  the  common  people  lived  wandering  lives, 
and  readily  formed  bands  of  pillagers.  The  upper  classes 
were  not  of  much  worth,  and  often  took  to  the  same  evil  kind 
of  life.  It  was  this  state  of  things  in  the  south  which  gave 
birth  to  the  two  institutions  of  which  we  are  speaking.  And 
they  were  imitated  in  the  north  by  the  lords  of  the  manor. 

Observe,  too,  that  feudal  independence,  like  all  forms  of 
independence,  made  it  necessary  for  each  lord  to  enforce  justice 
by  the  means  which  were  at  his  own  disposal.  The  lords  had 
no  other  means  of  guaranteeing  their  estates  except  personal 
force. 

Thence  arose  the  necessity  of  employing  arms  in  many 
cases.  As  they  had  to  deal  with  their  neighbours,  who  were 
their  equals  and  were  in  similar  circumstances,  and  were  not 
unarmed,  violence  was  inevitable  ;  and  in  the  struggle  between 
neighbour  and  neighbour  the  country  had  to  suffer,  or,  at  any 
rate,  had  cause  for  fear.  The  Peace  and  the  Truce  of  God 
were  two  institutions  for  protecting  the  people's  rights,  and  it 
was  imperative  that  they  should  be  observed  by  both  parties 
in  a  case  where  arms  were  used  to  enforce  claims.  To  enforce 
their  observance,  the  people  were  sanctioned  by  law  to  fall  with 
all  the  strength  they  could  muster  upon  whichever  of  the 
disputants  infringed  the  people's  rights  as  formulated  in  those 
institutions. 

Some  of  the  lords,  of  course,  were  eccentric  persons,  who 
made  war  for  the  sake  of  plunder.  But  it  must  be  clearly 
understood  that  they  did  not  plunder  their  own  domains  and 
their  own  men,  but  their  neighbours'.  But  men  of  that  type 
were  far  from  being  numerous.  By  preference  they  attacked 
the  property  of  the  Church,  because  it  was  less  well  defended. 
We  now  know  how  the  Church  organised  her  lawful  defence. 

It  is  highly  characteristic  of  the  good  social  conditions  then 
14 


210  THE  FEUDAL  SYSTEM 

existing  in  the  domains  that  the  Church  gained  a  perfectly 
regulated  and  organised  influence  over  the  people  inhabiting 
the  countries  where  the  particularist  form  of  society  flourished, 
which  led  to  many  results  of  unquestionable  importance,  both 
moral  and  intellectual.  In  other  countries  the  Church  was 
undergoing  terrible  convulsions,  as  indeed  was  everything  else, 
especially  in  Italy,  at  Rome.  In  France,  and  throughout  the 
region  where  particularist  influences  had  spread,  the  action  of 
the  Church  was  regularly  felt,  and  met  with  steady  and  powerful 
support. 

But  if  we  need  still  further  proofs  to  convince  ourselves  of 
the  value  of  the  tenth  and  eleventh  centuries,  we  have  only  to 
look  at  the  wonderful  increase  of  prosperity  which  was  their 
outcome. 

We  have  already  remarked  the  emancipation  of  the  serfs, 
the  powerful  influence  of  religion ;  to  these  must  be  added  the 
national  language  and  Romanesque  architecture. 

Above  all,  we  must  not  omit  to  mention  the  harmony  that 
existed  between  the  classes.  "  Except  for  a  few  isolated  facts," 
says  Leopold  Delisle,  "  we  have  searched  in  vain  for  traces 
of  that  antagonism  which,  according  to  modern  writers,  pre- 
vailed between  the  classes  of  the  society  of  the  Middle  Ages. 
The  peasants  early  regained  their  liberty.  Charters  and 
customs  clearly  defined  what  each  man  owed  to  the  other, 
either  in  payment  or  in  personal  service.  The  peasant  per- 
formed his  duties  without  repugnance  ;  he  knew  that  they 
were  the  price  of  the  land  which  provided  his  family  with  sus- 
tenance ;  he  knew  also  that  he  could  count  upon  the  aid  and 
protection  of  his  lord."  l 

The  result  of  this  social  harmony  was  the  triumphant 
expansion  of  the  race,  which  took  place  at  the  end  of  the  eleventh 
century. 

As  early  as  the  tenth  century,  when  three  formidable  in- 
vasions had  threatened  to  overwhelm  the  country  which  had 
been  conquered  by  the  particularist  family,  they  had  been 
victoriously  held  in  check  and  repulsed  :  they  were  the  Norman 
invasion  in  the  north,  the  invasion  of  the  Saracens  in  the  south, 
and  that  of  the  Hungarians  in  the  east,  who  came  as  far  as 
Lorraine.  The  particularist  race  did  not  lose  an  inch  of  land. 

1  Condition  de  la  dasse  agricole  en  Normandie  au  moyen  dye.  Preface. 


THE  ZENITH  OF  FEUDALISM  211 

Is  that  a  proof  of  anarchy,  of  decadence,  of  social  disorder,  of 
disorganisation,  of  want  of  understanding  between  the  classes, 
of  discouragement,  of  general  confusion,  of  miserable  helpless- 
ness, characteristics  which  it  has  been  considered  the  right 
thing  to  apply  to  the  tenth  century  ?  It  must  be  mentioned 
it  is  commonly  acknowledged  that  "  feudalism  saved  Europe 
at  that  time,"  a  confession  to  which  even  the  detractors  of 
that  period  are  forced  by  the  plainness  of  the  facts,  in  spite 
of  the  contradiction  it  implies. 

The  end  of  the  eleventh  century  gave  rise  to  a  real  epic, 
which,  even  after  the  lapse  of  eight  centuries,  still  fires  our 
imagination.  It  radiates  from  France,  its  point  of  departure  : 
let  us  follow  it.  In  the  north,  England  was  conquered  by  the 
Normans,  those  later  arrivals  from  Scandinavia,  who  became 
incorporated  with  their  elders  and  predecessors,  the  Franks, 
and  developed  the  most  regular  type  of  feudalism  (1066).  In 
the  south,  Portugal  was  wrested  from  the  hands  of  the  Saracens 
by  a  French  prince,  Henry  of  Burgundy,  the  great-grandson  of 
Robert  the  Pious,  King  of  France,  and  son  of  Hugh  Capet 
(1094).  Southern  Italy,  and  Sicily  too,  were  conquered  by  small 
Norman  lords  (1090).  In  the  east,  Hungary  adopted  the  feudal 
system  after  its  conversion  to  Christianity ;  the  March  of 
Brandenburg,  the  birthplace  of  the  Prussian  monarchy,  was 
won  from  the  Slavs  by  the  Saxons  and  Franks  of  the  Saxon 
plain.  At  all  these  points  the  limits  of  Charlemagne's  empire 
were  overstepped.  But  the  boldest  and,  I  must  add,  the 
rashest  enterprise  in  which  the  generation  sprung  from  the 
eleventh  century  showed  its  true  colours,  was  that  crusade, 
the  most  famous  of  all,  which  was  headed  by  Godfrey  of  Bouillon, 
Bohemond,  Tancred,  and  their  comrades.  When  we  think 
that  these  petty  lords  conceived  and  realised  the  idea  of  going 
right  across  Continental  Europe  and  Asia  Minor  to  conquer 
land,  we  get  an  idea  of  what  they  must  have  been  on  their  own 
estates,  and  of  what  their  men  were,  of  the  exuberant  vitality 
which  had  been  fostered  there.  The  other  crusades  were  much 
less  audacious,  because,  in  the  first  place,  the  road  was  already 
known  to  them,  and  because,  subsequently,  they  travelled  a 
great  part  of  the  way  by  sea. 

These  expeditions,  which  are  quite  worthy  of  epics,  were 
all  voluntary  enterprises  :  that  must  not  be  forgotten.  Feudal 


212  THE  FEUDAL  SYSTEM 

service  had  no  rights  in  the  matter.  All  those  who  took  part 
in  the  expeditions  in  the  north  or  the  east,  in  the  conquest 
of  England  or  the  taking  of  Jerusalem,  were  enrolled  entirely 
of  their  own  free  will.  Their  expenses  were  paid  either  out  of 
their  own  pockets  or  by  funds  collected  by  way  of  largesse, 
such  as  alms  given  by  Christians  for  the  crusades. 

That  explains  how  it  was  possible  for  these  expeditions  to 
go  on  simultaneously  with  the  military  system,  such  as  we  have 
seen  it,  concentred  on  the  domain.  The  obligations  of  feudalism, 
the  ordinary  organisation,  went  for  nothing  in  these  huge 
movements  :  they  were  simply  the  spontaneous  result  of  the 
free  and  natural  expansion  of  the  race. 

Moreover,  it  must  be  well  understood  that  this  powerful 
radiation  was  brought  about  by  three  things,  which  are  quite 
in  accordance  with  our  description  of  the  social  system.  The 
first  was  the  extraordinary  personal  valour  of  the  knights, 
who  were  as  good  as  an  army  in  themselves  :  we  have  proofs  of 
this  in  the  almost  incredible  exploits  of  the  sons  of  the  petty 
Norman  lord,  Tancred  of  Hauteville,  and  of  their  comrades 
in  Italy  and  Sicily  :  the  same  thing  was  manifested  in  most  of 
the  deeds  of  prowess  accomplished  in  the  crusade.  The  second 
was  the  desire  of  the  individual  to  create  an  estate  for  himself, 
or  to  risk  his  person  for  the  sake  of  things  in  which  he  was 
interested,  apart  from  personal  considerations :  we  have 
proof  of  this  in  the  conquest  of  England  or  in  the  popular 
movement  of  the  crusades.  The  third  was  the  widespread 
reputation  of  the  feudal  system  and  the  desire  of  imitation 
which  it  stirred  up  :  the  proof  of  this  lies  in  the  way  in  which 
Hungary  adopted  an  organisation  similar  to  that  of  Frankish 
Europe. 

I  must  add,  by  way  of  termination,  that  the  expansion  did 
not  show  its  less  satisfactory  and,  I  was  going  to  say,  more 
militant  side,  till  the  end  of  the  eleventh  century.  The  reason 
was  that  a  new  element  was  then  introduced  which  modified 
the  feudal  system  :  we  shall  come  to  it  later,  in  due  time. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE  INTRODUCTION  OF  THE  SAXONS  INTO 
GREAT  BRITAIN  BY  THE  JUTES 

BEFORE  passing  to  the  causes  of  the  decay  of  the  feudal 
system,  we  must  study  the  formation  of  another  type, 
which,  like  that  of  the  Frank,  was  the  result  of  a  Saxon  emigra- 
tion headed  by  Odinid  chiefs.     I  mean  the  type  of  the  Saxon  of 
Great  Britain  called  hereafter  the  Anglo-Saxon. 

The  Saxon  of  Great  Britain  differed  from  the  Saxon  of  the 
Continent  in  so  far  as  he  happened  to  find  rich  soil,  as  did 
the  Frank.  And  he  differed  from  the  Frank  in  so  far  as  he 
cleared  the  land  of  inhabitants,  just  as  the  Saxon  of  the  Con- 
tinent had  done  in  the  plain  of  the  Weser,  which  had  been 
occupied  by  the  Cherusci. 

The  fertile  part  of  England  proper,  the  splendid  plains  of 
her  great  rivers,  produced  the  rich  soil  where  the  Anglo-Saxon 
type  was  formed.  The  Saxon  invasion,  in  the  first  instance, 
stopped  abruptly  at  the  foot  of  the  three  great  mountain 
ranges  of  the  west,  from  which  the  rivers  flow  down  :  the  hills 
of  Cornwall,  the  mountains  of  Wales  and  those  of  Cumberland. 
In  the  north  it  was  checked  by  the  mountain  lands  of  Scotland, 
the  mountain  chain  of  the  Cheviots  and  the  district  round 
the  Grampians  known  as  the  Highlands. 

The  wonderful  productive  powers  of  the  superb  lower  plains 
of  England  are  well  known  :  I  need  not  insist  on  them  further. 

But  though  the  country  is  naturally  as  fertile  as  many  of  the 
best  parts  of  Gaul,  the  Romans  did  not  colonise  it  in  the  same 
manner  as  they  did  Gaul.  The  reason  was  that  the  atmo- 
spheric conditions  were  different.  Even  the  north  of  Gaul,  the 
part  specially  called  Belgic  Gaul,  beyond  the  Marne  and  the 
Seine,  had  been  but  slightly  Romanised :  we  noticed  that 
the  Franks  were  not  really  surrounded  by  Roman  institutions 

213 


214          INTRODUCTION  OF  THE  SAXONS 

till  they  reached  the  Seine.  The  climate  is  usually  the  deter- 
mining factor  in  the  diffusion  of  a  people.  As  the  Roman 
went  farther  north  the  climate  became  more  unlike  what  he 
was  used  to  than  when  he  went  eastwards  in  the  basin 
of  the  Mediterranean,  or  to  the  right  of  the  Danube  across 
Central  Europe,  and  from  there  into  Asia  Minor.  For  this 
reason  Roman  colonisation,  which  had  spread  so  far  to  the  east, 
stopped  short  in  the  north  in  spite  of  a  long  and  powerful 
military  occupation.1 

The  intention  of  the  Romans,  when  they  occupied  Great 
Britain  by  military  force,  was  not  to  spread  over  the  land,  nor 
grow  rich  there,  nor  get  the  best  from  it  they  could  by  making 
settlements  in  the  country  and  town  centres.  After  discussing 
what  the  Romans  would  gain  by  conquering  the  country,  Cicero 
came  to  the  conclusion  that  nothing  but  slaves  were  to  be  got 
from  it.  Caesar  had  no  other  object  in  view  when  he  crossed  the 
Channel  with  his  legions  than  to  deprive  the  Gauls  of  the  support 
which  the  neighbouring  people  afforded  them :  "  Though  the 
summer,"  he  says,  "  was  nearly  over,  and  the  winter  is  early  in 
these  parts  where  Gaul  slopes  almost  entirely  towards  the  north, 
Caesar  undertook  an  expedition  to  Great  Britain,  because  he 
knew  that  in  almost  all  our  wars  against  the  Gauls  help  had 
come  to  them  from  that  quarter."  2 

The  atmospheric  conditions  of  the  northern  countries  were 
antipathetic  and  repellent  to  the  people  of  the  Mediterranean. 
That  goes  without  saying,  and  is  true  at  the  present  day. 
Those  people  cannot  bear  to  part  from  their  blue  sky.  That 
explains  why  the  Romans  did  not  let  themselves  be  captivated 
by  the  fertility  of  those  misty  lands  :  "I  shall  proceed  to 
describe,  on  the  evidence  of  facts,  matters,  which  being  then  but 
inaccurately  known,  my  predecessors  embellished  with  their 
eloquence,"  says  Tacitus.  "  The  climate  of  Britain  is  repulsive 
because  of  its  rain  and  continual  mists.  Severe  cold  is  unknown. 
Except  for  the  olive,  the  vine,  and  the  other  kinds  of  vegetation 
that  are  natives  of  warm  countries,  the  soil  is  favourable  to 
every  kind  of  produce  ;  it  is  fertile."  3  It  would  not  be  out  of 
place  here  to  quote  the  feeling  words  which  escaped  from  that 
same  Roman  at  the  beginning  of  his  description  of  Germany, 

1  See  a  map  of  the  Roman  Empire :  Atlas,  Vidal-Lablache,  16. 

2  De  Bdlo  Gallico,  bk.  iv.  20.  3  Life  of  Agricola,  10,  12. 


INTO  GREAT  BRITAIN  BY  THE  JUTES      215 

in  spite  of  the  intense  interest  with  which  those  northern  lands 
inspired  him :  "Even  supposing  no  dangers  were  to  be  antici- 
pated from  a  rough  and  unknown  sea,  who  would  ever  leave 
Asia,  Africa,  or  Italy  to  go  and  live  in  that  wild  land  of  Germany, 
with  its  inclement  skies,  its  sombre  aspect  and  unattractive 
customs,  if  it  were  not  his  fatherland  ?  "  l 

But  whatever  may  have  been  their  dislike  of  the  lands  of 
the  north,  once  the  Romans  had  set  foot  in  Great  Britain  they 
could  not  put  a  limit  to  their  conquest.  They  found  themselves 
at  war  with  peoples  who  had  scarcely  settled  down  at  all  to  a 
sedentary  life  and  fought  like  nomads,  dispersing  far  and 
wide  when  defeated,  then  reappearing,  enforced  with  fresh 
bands,  and  hurling  themselves  down  upon  the  enemy  like 
mountain  torrents.  It  was  impossible  to  establish  a  fixed 
and  stable  frontier  against  such  restless  people.  The  conquerors 
were  obliged  to  penetrate  into  the  heart  of  the  country  to  reach 
these  reserves  of  men,  and  had  to  set  up  two  great  walls  right 
across  the  land  in  order  to  check  their  ceaseless  incursions  : 
there  was  Adrian's  Wall  between  the  Solway  Firth  and  the 
mouth  of  the  Tyne,  and  the  wall  built  by  Septimus  Severus 
from  the  mouth  of  the  Clyde  to  the  Firth  of  Forth.  But  even 
that  was  not  enough  to  fix  these  restless  beings  to  the  land ; 
they  were  always  in  readiness  to  attack  the  Romans  or  to  fall 
upon  each  other.  For  four  and  a  half  centuries  the  imperial 
domination  was  entirely  absorbed  in  keeping  them  in  check. 

From  Caesar's  first  landing  in  55  B.C.  till  the  final  retreat  of 
the  legions  when  they  were  recalled  by  Honorius  in  408  to  check 
the  great  barbarian  invasion  on  the  Continent,  the  Roman 
occupation  showed  itself  only  in  the  following  ways  : 

1.  By  the  creation  of  Roman  roads  to  facilitate  the  passage 
of  the  legions.     The  most  famous  of  these  roads  is  that  which 
crossed  England  obliquely  from  Dover  to  Chester.     It  thus 
led  from  the  south  to  the  north  at  the  same  time  as  from  the 
east  to  the  west.    It  followed  the  general  direction  of  the  hills, 
which  form,  as  it  were,  the  backbone  of  the  country  and  com- 
mand the  whole  land. 

2.  By  the  construction  of  intrenched  camps.     They  are  the 
origin  of  many  names  of  places  which  end  in  cester  or  chester, 
the  ancient  Saxon  form  of  the  Latin  word  castrum,  camp.     The 

1  Ger mania,  ii. 


216  INTRODUCTION  OF  THE  SAXONS 

town  of  Chester,  for  instance,  now  celebrated  for  its  cheeses, 
owes  its  name  to  the  camp  which  guarded  the  western  extremity 
of  the  Roman  road  I  have  just  mentioned. 

3.  By  the  establishment  of  centres  for  agents  of  commercial 
companies.     Roman  merchants  used  to  set  up  depots,  under 
shelter  of  the  camps,  where  they  collected  slaves  for  sale  and 
traded  in  furs  from  the  north,  which  the  native  hunters  procured 
for  them. 

4.  By  the  formation  of  colonies  of  officials.     The  multitude 
of  posts  in  the  imperial  government  were  the  great  attraction 
to  Roman  immigrants  in  Great  Britain,  where,  as  we  have 
just  said,  colonisation  had  but  few  natural  attractions  for  men 
of  southern  races.     The  officials,   at  any  rate,  found  ample 
scope  for  pillaging,  as  elsewhere.     It  is  probable,  however,  that 
even  they  were  not  very  desirous  of  settling  in  Britain.     Their 
colonies  were  not  permanent.     They  must  have  longed  for  more 
sunny  provinces,  for  larger  profits  among  less  primitive  tribes. 

5.  By  the  foundation  of  public  buildings.     These  were  built 
by  the  emperors  to  fulfil  certain  intellectual  and  material  needs 
of  the  official  staff  and  of  the  few  Romans  who  cared  to  live 
there  as  colonists. 

Thus  there  was  no  such  invasion  of  private  men,  no  such 
Latin  colonisation,  no  such  fusion  of  natives  with  conquering 
peoples  as  took  place  in  Gaul.  No  race  of  "  Britanno-Romans  " 
was  formed  like  that  of  the  Gallo-Romans.  The  reason  is  that 
the  Roman  occupation  of  Great  Britain  was  purely  military 
and  official,  and  no  farming  colonists  settled  in  the  land. 

So  when,  after  453  years  of  this  kind  of  domination,  the 
empire  collected  its  forces  for  a  last  stand  against  the  barbarians, 
and  recalled  its  legions  from  Great  Britain,  there  was  a  whole- 
sale departure  of  Romans  from  the  country.  It  would  almost 
be  possible  to  state  the  day  and  hour  when  it  took  place,  as  if 
it  were  the  raising  of  a  siege.  There  was  no  defeat  of  the 
imperial  forces,  as  there  might  have  been  had  the  invaders 
broken  through  the  frontier,  as  they  did  on  the  Continent, 
but  there  was  an  exodus  of  the  Roman  population.  And,  on 
its  departure,  the  population,  which  consisted  chiefly  of  soldiers 
and  officials,  left  behind  it  scarcely  a  mark  of  its  activity. of 
four  hundred  years.  So  few  traces  of  its  work  did  it  leave 
behind  that  Montalembert  wrote,  "  Imperial  Rome  left  no 


INTO  GREAT  BRITAIN  BY  THE  JUTES      217 

trace  of  her  horrible  rule  in  the  institutions  any  more  than  in 
the  monuments  of  Great  Britain.  The  language  and  customs 
escaped  her  influence  as  well  as  the  laws.  All  that  is  not 
Celtic  is  Teutonic  in  that  island."  l 

All  this  explains  how  it  was  that  the  Odinid  chiefs,  who,  as 
we  shall  see,  introduced  the  Saxons  into  England  after  the 
departure  of  the  Komans,  did  not  find  that  organisation 
of  Roman  government  or  the  Romanised  population  which 
constituted  all  the  strength  of  the  Merovingian  rule  in 
Gaul. 

The  opposition  the  Saxon  invasion  encountered  in  Great 
Britain  was  from  the  pure  Celts.  There  had  been  an  incessant 
influx  of  Celts  from  Gaul.  They  pushed  each  other  towards 
the  north  in  proportion  as  there  were  fresh  arrivals  in  the  south. 
At  the  time  of  the  Roman  occupation  and  up  to  the  arrival 
of  the  Saxons  there  were  three  distinct  layers  of  Celts,  as  it 
were,  superposed,  which  had  evidently  come  there  at  three 
different  periods. 

In  the  extreme  north — that  is  to  say,  in  Scotland — were  those 
who  had  been  the  first  to  land  and  had  been  driven  up  there. 
They  had  retained  the  nomadic  habits  and  other  peculiarities 
of  the  primitive  Celts.  The  country,  which  is  still  famous  for 
hunting,  was  of  such  a  nature  as  to  hasten  their  decay.  They 
had  all  the  habits  of  a  hunting  population  ;  they  were  wild  in  ap- 
pearance and  tattooed  themselves.  The  tribe  of  Picts  inhabited 
the  eastern  slope  of  Scotland,  while  the  Celts  on  the  west  were 
called  Caledonians.  But  on  the  western  side  they  were  dis- 
turbed by  other  Celts,  who  had  crossed  in  the  first  place  from 
the  south  and  the  centre  of  England  to  Ireland,  had  travelled 
to  the  north,  crossed  to  Scotland  by  sea,  and  taken  possession 
of  the  lands  round  the  Firth  of  Clyde.  These  people  were 
known  as  the  Scots.  They  eventually  gave  their  name  to 
Scotland. 

From  the  north  of  England  proper  to  the  northern  edge 
of  the  basin  of  the  Thames  was  a  second  layer  of  Celts,  who 
formed  the  intermediate  type  of  the  population  of  Great  Britain. 
They  were  called  Britons.  They  were  more  civilised  than  the 
Picts  and  Caledonians,  did  not  haunt  the  woods  so  much  or 
wander  from  place  to  place,  though  they  were  still  very  restless  : 
1  Les  Moines  d' Occident  bk.  x.  chap.  i.  vol.  ii.  p.  11. 


2i8          INTRODUCTION  OF  THE  SAXONS 

their  main  occupation  was  the  care  of  flocks  and  herds,  to  which 
the  country  was  admirably  suited.  There  are  three  kinds  of 
soil  in  England  which  are  constantly  found  side  by  side.  At 
the  bottom  of  the  valleys  are  luxuriant  meadows  ;  they  afforded 
pasture  for  all  kinds  of  cattle  and  a  sheltered  retreat  from  the 
cold  in  winter  for  all  living  things.  On  the  slopes  of  the  hills 
were  magnificent  forests,  mainly  of  oaks  ;  they  harboured 
innumerable  herds  of  swine.  Finally,  on  the  tops  of  the  hills, 
on  the  open  pastures,  which  were  sufficiently  watered  by  the 
humidity  of  the  climate,  grazed  flocks  of  sheep.  I  need  not 
say  that  in  such  a  spot  it  was  easy  for  the  Celts  to  continue  to 
lead  the  wandering  life  of  shepherds. 

A  third  layer  of  Celts,  which  have  been  confused  with  the 
preceding  because  they  bore  the  same  name  of  Britons,  but 
who  were  really  distinct,  occupied  the  land  between  the  northern 
rim  of  the  basin  of  the  Thames  and  the  Channel.  They  were 
Belgse,  belonging  to  the  same  tribe  as  those  of  the  north  of  Gaul, 
and  they  sometimes  bore  the  same  name.  For  instance,  there 
were  Atrebates  there  as  well  as  in  Artois.  The  third  group  of 
Celts  were  the  most  like  the  Celts  of  Gaul  in  every  way.  They 
had  been  the  last  to  emigrate  to  Great  Britain  ;  they  traded 
with  those  who  remained  on  the  other  side  of  the  Channel ; 
like  them,  too,  they  devoted  themselves  to  agriculture  and 
the  industrial  arts  more  than  the  other  Britons.  They  too 
came  the  most  into  contact  with  the  Romans.  But  since  the 
Romans  failed  to  surround  them  with  active  agricultural 
colonists,  they  continued  to  live  a  wandering  life  and  to  have 
a  nomadic  form  of  organisation,  while  at  the  same  time  they 
practised  a  primitive  kind  of  agriculture  and  employed  a 
system  of  clan  government.  For  the  system  of  clan  govern- 
ment, under  the  guise  of  an  authority  based  on  the  family 
and  tribal  headship,  or  of  a  local  and  subordinate  power,  was 
carried  on  behind  the  Roman  administration  and  was  the 
machinery  which  organised  the  frequent  risings  of  the 
people. 

Such,  then,  roughly  speaking,  was  the  population  which  the 
Saxons  found  in  possession  of  Great  Britain  at  the  time  of  their 
landing.  The  Celts  were  certainly  but  little  attached  to  the 
soil,  and  so  it  can  be  easily  understood  how  they  withdrew  of 
their  own  accord  from  the  places  where  the  Saxon  peasants 


INTO  GREAT  BRITAIN  BY  THE  JUTES      219 

built  their  dwellings.    We  now  propose  to  follow  the  phases 
of  their  history. 

Since  the  restless  disposition  of  the  Celts  of  Great  Britain  was 
originally  the  result  of  their  pastoral  profession,  and  as  it  did 
not  specially  spring  from  a  hatred  of  foreigners,  it  did  not  dis- 
appear after  the  departure  of  the  Romans.  No  sooner  were 
they  rid  of  the  oppressive  peace  which  the  imperial  domination 
had  forced  upon  them  than  the  island  tribes  gave  themselves 
up  freely  to  their  favourite  pursuit  of  making  incursions  upon 
one  another.  The  lead  was  chiefly  taken  by  the  most  nomadic 
of  the  tribes,  the  Caledonians,  the  Picts  and  Scots,  who  came 
down  from  the  north  and  swept  over  England.  The  Belgae, 
who  lived  between  the  Thames  and  the  Channel,  suffered  the 
most  heavily  from  this  kind  of  warfare,  as  they  were  the  most 
sedentary  of  the  tribes.  The  different  tribal  groups  of  this 
southern  region  united  themselves  when  menaced  by  this 
common  danger,  and  chose  as  penteyrn  or  pendragon — that  is 
to  say,  as  their  common  leader — Vortigern,  who  belonged  to  a 
tribe  which  occupied  the  district  about  London. 

The  advantages  of  London  as  a  place  for  concentration  have 
been  manifest  from  that  time.  Owing  to  the  position  it  holds 
in  the  splendid  basin  of  the  Thames,  it  formed  even  in  those 
days  a  wonderfully  convenient  market  both  for  home  and 
foreign  trade.  Its  first  start  was  modest,  to  be  sure,  but  its 
superiority  over  the  other  centres  in  England  was  not  slow  in 
declaring  itself. 

The  foreign  merchants,  who  quite  naturally  took  the  place  of 
the  Roman  traders,  were  those  from  the  shores  nearest  Great 
Britain  and  outside  the  territory  of  the  empire — that  is  to  say, 
the  Jutes. 

The  Jutes  were  merely  Goths  from  the  Scandinavian  penin- 
sula, which  was  known  as  the  Cimbrian  Chersonessus  from  the 
name  of  the  famous  Cimbrians  who  descended  from  there  upon 
Rome,  and  Jutland  from  the  name  of  the  Gothic  population. 
The  soil  of  a  large  portion  of  Jutland  was  much  inferior  to  that 
of  the  Scandinavian  islands  and  of  Scania  (the  south  of  Sweden), 
the  principal  home  of  the  Goths,  and  so  its  inhabitants  were 
more  ready  to  abandon  agriculture  and  take  to  maritime  trade 
and  piracy.  Great  Britain  offered  them  a  fair  field  for  this 
kind  of  enterprise,  since  the  Romans  had  entirely  abandoned  it. 


220          INTRODUCTION  OF  THE  SAXONS 

Its  inhabitants  were  within  easy  reach,  and  were  a  simple,  still 
primitive  people,  who  were  excellent  customers  for  merchants 
and  an  easy  prey  for  pirates. 

But  piracy  and  trade  cannot  be  carried  on  with  a  primitive 
country  without  the  support  of  military  forces,  so  the  Odinid 
warriors  became  the  great  leaders  of  thesa  maritime  expeditions. 
They  built  large  vessels,  well  equipped  and  well  armed,  which 
served  to  protect  the  transports  of  the  Jutes. 

At  the  time  when  Vortigern  was  elected  penteyrn,  the 
brothers  Hengist  and  Horsa,  whom  posterity  has  placed  among 
Odin's  direct  descendants,  were  at  the  head  of  those  Jutes  who 
were  carrying  on  trade  with  London.  Vortigern  applied  to 
them  to  bring  him  help  from  abroad,  to  enrol  in  his  service 
some  one  of  those  northern  bands  which  had  won  such  renown 
by  their  conquest  of  the  Roman  Empire.  This  took  place  a 
little  before  450.  On  that  occasion  the  Britons  did  just  what 
the  Corsicans,  for  instance,  a  somewhat  similar  social  type,  so 
often  did  when  their  intestine  quarrels  drove  them  to  appeal 
to  the  generosity  of  the  merchants  of  Genoa  and  Pisa,  who 
got  them  soldiers,  as  well  as  every  other  kind  of  merchandise. 
Hengist  and  Horsa  came  to  an  agreement  with  Vortigern. 
It  was  an  undertaking  very  much  to  the  liking  of  the  Odinids. 
They  enrolled  all  the  Jutes  they  could  find  who  were  seeking 
their  fortunes,  and  also  obtained  reinforcements  among  their 
neighbours  the  Saxons,  who  were  in  search  of  lands. 

It  was  in  this  way  that  the  Saxons  were  shown  the  road  to 
England. 

The  manner  in  which  the  Odinids  went  about  the  north  of 
Europe  recruiting  bands  of  warriors  to  pillage  or  conquer  states, 
and  led  the  Saxons  in  search  of  new  domains,  is  evinced  by 
nothing  so  clearly  as  the  above  circumstance.  At  that  very 
time  the  Saxon  emigrations,  which  were  grouped  under  the 
characteristic  name  of  "  Frank  "  or  "  free  "  bands,  and  had 
already  filled  the  valleys  of  the  Rhine  and  the  Main,  finally 
reached  Celtic  Gaul  with  Merovig. 

The  first  Saxon  expedition  into  Great  Britain  was  really 
a  joint  expedition  of  Jutes  and  Saxons.  But  the  Jutes  pre- 
dominated. The  whole  affair,  however,  was  on  a  very  small 
scale. 

They  landed  at  the  Isle  of  Thanet.     It  is  the  extreme  point 


INTO  GREAT  BRITAIN  BY  THE  JUTES      221 

of  the  country  which  the  Celts  called  the  "  projection,"  the 
promontory — Kent,  in  their  own  tongue.  It  was  called  an 
island  because  it  was  enclosed  between  the  sea  and  the  two 
mouths  of  the  river  Stour.  The  expedition  travelled  up  the 
Stour  as  far  as  Canterbury.  There  it  found  the  Eoman  road 
of  which  we  have  spoken,  and  joined  Vortigern  at  London. 
The  combined  force  advanced  by  the  same  Roman  road  as  far 
as  Leicester  (that  is  to  say,  the  camp,  castrum,  of  the  river  Leire, 
the  ancient  name  of  the  river  Soar). 

At  that  point  the  valley  of  the  Thames  ends  and  the  great 
basin  of  the  Humber  begins.  It  stretches  as  far  as  Scotland, 
and  was  the  region  upon  which  the  northern  Celts  directed 
most  of  their  attacks.  An  encounter  at  that  place  was  inevitable. 

But  on  the  east  of  Leicester  is  a  region  of  immense  marshes, 
formed  by  all  the  rivers  which  flow  into  the  Wash.  The  ex- 
pedition bore  to  that  side  in  order  to  have  the  marshes  at  its 
rear  and  avoid  being  surrounded  by  the  northern  Celts,  who 
were  far  superior  in  numbers.  It  encamped  near  Stamford, 
on  the  Welland,  a  tributary  of  the  Wash. 

It  sustained  the  attack  of  the  enemy  victoriously,  dashed 
in  pursuit  of  the  assailants — who  took  flight  after  the  failure  of 
their  attack,  as  was  the  habit  of  the  Celts — and  routed  them 
completely.  Horsa  perished  gloriously  in  the  battle. 

Hengist  and  his  skilled  navigators,  like  the  good  merchants 
and  pirates  that  they  were,  demanded  in  return  for  their  services 
the  Isle  of  Thanet — where  they  had  landed — and  the  Isle  of 
Wight.  Those  are  the  two  places  which,  with  their  natural 
defences — for  they  are  both  surrounded  by  water — command 
the  finest  places  for  landing  in  England.  The  Isle  of  Thanet, 
on  the  one  hand,  commands  the  mouth  of  the  Thames  and 
London ;  and  on  the  other,  commands  the  seacoast  of  Kent, 
"  where,"  as  Caesar  had  already  remarked,  "  almost  all  the 
vessels  coming  from  Gaul  used  to  land  their  goods."  x  The 
Isle  of  Wight  commands  the  ports  of  Southampton  and  Ports- 
mouth, which  are  more  famous  than  ever  at  the  present  day, 
the  one  for  commerce,  the  other  as  a  military  station. 

But  however  well  satisfied  Hengist  and  his  skilled  navigators 
were  with  their  two  cleverly  chosen  maritime  posts,  some  of 
their  followers  were  not  contented.  The  Jutes,  who  had  been 
1  De  Bella  Oallico,  bk.  v.  13. 


222  INTRODUCTION  OF  THE  SAXONS 

enlisted  for  the  expedition,  and  the  Saxons  wanted  something 
different,  a  piece  of  dry  land,  a  country  to  live  in.  Conse- 
quently a  quarrel  soon  arose  between  the  followers  of  Hengist 
and  the  Britons  under  Vortigern  about  the  fair  lands  of  the 
country  of  Kent,  which  lay  opposite  the  Isle  of  Thanet,  and 
which  the  new-comers  wished  to  occupy.  A  fight  took  place 
at  Aylesford,  on  the  Medway,  a  tributary  of  the  Thames,  which 
forms  a  kind  of  broad  dyke  across  Kent.  Hengist,  who  took 
his  stand  in  the  part  of  Kent  between  the  Isle  of  Thanet  and 
the  Medway,  got  the  upper  hand.  In  this  way  the  kingdom  of 
the  Jutes  ivas  founded  in  Kent. 

The  Jutes  had  certainly  brought  Saxons  with  them,  but 
they  were  not  true  Saxons  :  they  did  not  belong  to  the  particu- 
larist  form  of  society ;  their  ancestors  had  not  undergone  any 
transformation  on  the  shores  of  Norway.  They  belonged,  as 
I  said  before,  to  the  Old  Germans  and  to  the  Gothic  branch 
of  the  Old  Germans  :  they  were  Goths  from  the  Danish  peninsula, 
a  country  less  rich  by  nature  than  the  islands  because  its  western 
and  northern  regions  are  largely  formed  by  sands  and  lagoons. 
Many  points  in  the  history  of  their  invasion  of  England  can  be 
explained  when  once  we  have  grasped  what  determined  their 
form  of  society  : 

1.  Historians  appear  to  have  always  distinguished  them  from 
the  Saxons,  even  from  those  who  took  part  in  the  expedition. 
They  have  taken  care  to  point  out  that  the  band  of  Hengist  and 
Horsa  was   composed   of  two   elements — the  Jutes   and  the 
Saxons  ;   while,  on  the  contrary,  when  the  Saxons  came  alone, 
later  on,  in  several  different  expeditions,  and  founded  kingdoms 
which  were  not  merely  distinct  but  even  hostile  to  each  other, 
historians  have  confounded  them  under  the  same  name  of 
Saxons.     The  disparity  of  the  social  types  on  the  one  hand, 
and  their  similarity  on  the  other,  explain  the  use  of  these  names. 

2.  It  is  obvious  that  before  the  expedition  the  Jutes  had 
frequented   England  without   appropriating   any   land  there. 
They  entertained  friendly  commercial  relations  with  London, 
with  Vortigern's  people,  who  asked  for  their  assistance.     The 
Isle  of  Thanet,  even,  did  not  belong  to  them,  since  they  caused 
it  to  be  ceded  to  them  after  their  successful  intervention  against 
the  northern  Britons.     The  situation  decidedly  points  to  their 
being  navigators  living  by  commerce  and  adventure  rather 


INTO  GREAT  BRITAIN  BY  THE  JUTES      223 

than    agricultural    farmers,    who    were    merely   in   search    of 
land. 

3.  The  firm  "  Hengist  &  Horsa  Brothers  "  marks  patriarchal 
organisation.     It  might  be  said  that  that  concerns  only  the 
Odinids,  the  chiefs  of  the  expedition,  and  not  the  Jutes.     But 
there  is  another  point  which  is  undoubtedly  characteristic  of 
the  Jutes.     It  is  this  :  in  the  kingdom  of  Kent,  where  the  band 
of  Jutes  settled,  the  Jarls  were  distinguished  from  the  Karls — 
that  is  to  say,  the  nobles  from  the  peasants — just  as  was  the  case 
with  the  Goths.     The  form  of  the  words  was  slightly  different : 
they  were  written  eorls  and  ceorls,  from  which  came  earl  and 
churl,  but  the  meaning  is  the  same.     The  distinction  between 
nobles  and  peasants  is  not  found  among  the  Saxons,  who  seem 
to   have   been   pure   democrats.     Further,   there   were   many 
personages  among  the  Jutes  of  England  in  whose  names  the 
word  ethel,  signifying  noble,  occurred — as,  for  example,  Ethel- 
bert,  Ethelburge,  Ethelred,  Ethelbrith.     No  such  usage  is  found 
among  the  Saxons  of  that  period. 

4.  The  new  inhabitants  of  Kent  are  represented  in  history 
as  a  gentle,  refined  people  with  lofty  aspirations  and  high  ideals. 
The  sympathetic  manner  in  which  they  welcomed  the  mission  of 
St.  Augustine  of  Canterbury,  and  the  qualities  of  true  greatness 
they  displayed  on  that  occasion,  will  always  live  in  history.     We 
seem  to  perceive  in  them  a  mind  open  to  intellectual  ideas, 
to  foreign  influences.     The  Saxons,  on  the  contrary,  for  a  long 
time  had  the  reputation  of  being  regular  peasants,  entirely 
absorbed  in  their  personal  affairs.     Here  again  we  touch  upon 
the  difference  between  the  commercial  and  the  agricultural  types. 

The  Jutes  and  Saxons,  then,  were  utterly  distinct. 

The  peculiarly  commercial  character  of  the  Jutes  explains 
a  phenomenon  which  historians  have  omitted  to  elucidate  ; 
it  explains  why  the  Jutes  did  not  continue  to  invade  and  people 
Great  Britain.  Even  in  the  single  expedition  they  made,  they 
were  obliged,  as  we  saw,  to  get  recruits  from  the  Saxons.  The 
fact  is  that  Great  Britain,  as  we  have  described  it,  offered,  after 
all,  only  a  modest  field  for  exploitation,  and  somewhat  limited 
resources.  The  country  was  not  such  as  to  attract  many 
merchants.  The  Romans  on  their  part  had  already  verified 
that  fact,  which  Cicero  had  predicted,  and,  naturally,  it  would 
have  been  much  less  favourable  for  trade  after  the  custom 


224  INTRODUCTION  OF  THE  SAXONS 

provided  by  the  Roman  military  and  administrative  colonies 
had  been  withdrawn.  Agricultural  immigrants,  on  the  contrary, 
who  were  in  search  of  land,  like  the  Saxons,  found  a  super- 
abundance of  just  what  they  wanted  in  a  country  with  rich 
soil,  with  virgin  soil,  where  it  was  very  easy  to  displace  the 
unstable  population.  For  that  reason  Hengist  and  Horsa, 
like  shrewd  men  of  business,  had  made  offers  to  the  Saxons. 

The  two  leaders  of  the  Jutes  had  not  been  obliged  to  apply  to 
the  Saxons  because  the  population  of  Jutland  was  insufficient ; 
for  the  first  expedition  did  not  number  very  many  persons,  and 
we  shall  see  later  that  Jutland  flooded  Great  Britain  with 
pirates  when  that  country  had  been  enriched  by  the  agriculture 
of  the  Saxons,  just  as  later  on  it  flooded  Neustria  when  that 
country  had  been  enriched  by  the  agriculture  of  the  Franks : 
it  then  became  a  rich  field  for  plunderers.  I  am  here  alluding 
to  the  Danish  invasions  which  started  from  Bibe,  on  the  western 
coast  of  Denmark.  But  at  the  time  of  Hengist  and  Horsa 
Great  Britain  was  not  in  a  condition  to  attract  the  Jutes  in 
great  numbers ;  they  were  content  for  their  part  to  have  got 
possession  of  the  two  positions  that  were  the  most  important 
from  the  point  of  view  of  navigation  and  commerce,  the  coast 
of  Kent  and  the  Isle  of  Wight.  In  the  same  way  European 
peoples  at  the  present  day  are  content  to  get  into  their  possession 
the  places  favourable  to  maritime  commerce  in  the  new  countries 
that  they  cannot  or  do  not  wish  to  people. 

However,  the  Jutes  could  not  help  perceiving  how  nearly 
their  situation  was  menaced  by  the  innumerable  Celtic  popula- 
tion, whom,  after  all,  they  were  trying  to  use  for  their  own 
advantage,  and  who  were  a  very  impressionable  people  and 
much  given  to  fighting.  A  single  headlong  charge  of  the  Celts 
might  one  day  have  swept  away  and  cast  to  the  winds  the 
small  dwellings  of  the  Jutes,  although  they  had  chosen  their 
sites  with  great  cleverness,  so  that  they  were  easily  defendable 
by  a  small  number  of  men  and  could  be  easily  reprovisioned 
and  succoured  by  sea. 

History  has  preserved  some  vestiges  of  the  vicissitudes 
which  the  colony  in  Kent  had  to  undergo.  It  is  known  that 
eight  years  after  the  victory  of  Aylesford,  which  won  for  them 
land  stretching  as  far  as  the  Medway,  the  Jutes  were  forced 
a  second  time  to  take  refuge  in  the  Isle  of  Thanet,  where  they 


INTO  GREAT  BRITAIN  BY  THE  JUTES      225 

withstood  the  impetuous  attack  of  the  natives  victoriously. 
The  latter  were  led  by  twelve  chiefs,  all  illustrious  men,  who  all 
killed  themselves  after  the  battle.  A  truly  Celtic  story  ! 

It  is  also  known  that  the  Jutes  were  unable  to  maintain 
their  hold  of  the  Isle  of  Wight,  which  was,  to  be  sure,  less 
important  than  Kent  and  the  Isle  of  Thanet  from  the  com- 
mercial point  of  view ;  for  we  shall  see  that  the  Saxons  con- 
quered it  in  their  turn,  and  had  to  drive  out  the  Britons. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Jutes,  who  avenged  themselves  from 
time  to  time,  used  to  make  sudden  and  terrible  raids,  sweeping 
rapidly  across  all  the  south  of  Great  Britain  between  the  Thames 
and  the  Channel.  The  lamentations  of  a  contemporary  British 
writer,  Gildas,  are  evidence  of  these  raids,  as  are  the  names  of 
places  which,  even  in  Cornwall,  have  retained  the  memory  of 
Hengist ;  for  example,  Hengestesdun,  originally  Hengestes-dune 
— that  is  to  say,  Hengist' s  mountain.  But,  when  they  had  done 
plundering,  the  Jutes  did  not  stay  in  the  country  ;  they  returned 
with  their  booty  to  the  shores  of  Kent.1 

We  gather  from  this  picture  of  the  way  of  life  to  which  the 
Jutes  had  been  thus  reduced,  that  they  must  have  been  well 
aware  what  an  advantage  it  would  be  to  them  if  the  Saxon 
cultivators,  who  were  eminently  capable  of  getting  a  firm  footing 
on  the  land  and  of  keeping  it,  and  would  guarantee  them 
against  the  incorrigible  incursions  of  their  uncomfortably  near 
neighbours  the  Britons,  would  establish  themselves  near  their 
own  settlement  in  Kent. 

The  Saxons  did  not  wait  to  be  asked  twice,  and  flowed  into 
the  country  without  delay.  The  history  of  England  really 
begins  with  them. 

1  Arthur  de  la  Borderie,  Les  Bretons  insulaires. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  PREDOMINANCE  OF"  THE  SAXONS  OVER  THE 
CELTS  AND  THE  JUTES  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN 

I  HAVE  related  how  the  Saxons,  in  company  with  the  Jutes, 
and  led  by  the  Odinid  chiefs  Hengist  and  Horsa,  were 
introduced  into  Great  Britain,  and  how,  after  the  first  expedition, 
it  had  been  to  the  interest  of  the  Jutes,  in  view  of  the  turbulence 
of  the  native  population,  to  encourage  pure  Saxons  to  come 
over  in  larger  numbers  and  colonise  that  rich-soiled  country. 

A  band  of  pure  Saxons  arrived  in  477,  twenty-two  years 
after  the  victory  of  Aylesford  had  secured  the  possession  of 
Kent  to  Hengist's  troop. 

The  difference  in  character  between  the  new-comers  and 
the  Jutes  is  brought  out  very  strongly  by  the  difference  in  their 
choice  of  land. 

The  former  chose  a  portion  of  the  southern  coast  of  England, 
which  was  unsuitable  for  maritime  settlements.  Although  it 
lay  just  between  Kent  and  the  Isle  of  Wight,  between  the 
district  round  Dover,  with  its  small  neighbouring  ports,  and 
that  round  Portsmouth  and  Southampton,  the  Jutes  had  not 
troubled  to  take  possession  of  it.  If  they  had  annexed  it,  they 
would  have  brought  the  two  naval  positions  they  had  acquired 
into  touch.  But  the  coast  along  there  is  scarcely  accessible  for 
vessels.  The  two  most  important  towns  on  that  piece  of  coast, 
Brighton  and  Newhaven,  illustrate  that  fact.  Brighton  has  no 
harbour,  and  vessels  have  to  discharge  their  freights  at  the  end 
of  long  piers.  Newhaven  is  only  a  very  small  port,  which 
the  daily  arrival  of  steamers  from  Dieppe  alone  rouses  to  a 
momentary  state  of  animation. 

On  the  other  hand,  that  district  was  admirably  suitable 
for  the  reception  of  a  colony  of  agriculturists  at  the  time  of  the 
coming  of  the  Saxons,  for  the  following  reasons  : 

226 


CELTS  AND  JUTES  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN    227 

The  very  inaccessibility  of  the  coast  was  a  security  against 
pirates,  while  the  sea  afforded  the  colonists  a  possible  means 
of  escape  in  time  of  need.  Moreover,  the  district  is  protected 
by  a  natural  entrenchment.  Hills  rise  up  all  along  the  coast. 
In  the  west  they  are  some  little  distance  from  the  shore,  but 
they  gradually  approach  it  towards  the  east  until  they  terminate 
in  cliffs  ;  thus  they  command  the  whole  coast  from  Selsea  Bill 
to  Beachy  Head,  between  Chichester  and  Pevensey.  They  are 
called  the  South  Downs — that  is  to  say,  low  hills  ("  dunes  ") 
or  barren  ranges  situated  in  the  south.  They  are,  in  fact, 
chalk  hills,  and  only  produce  short  grass.  It  is  only  in  modern 
times  that  they  have  become  well  known  as  sheep  pastures. 
But,  like  the  walls  of  a  fortress,  they  formerly  constituted  a  line 
of  defence  against  invaders,  as  is  proved  by  the  considerable 
remains  of  entrenchments  which  still  crown  their  summits. 

A  plateau,  or  rather  an  elevated  plain,  extending  into  the 
interior  as  far  as  the  valley  of  the  Thames,  lies  well  protected 
behind  these  guardian  ramparts.  On  the  side  near  the  Thames 
it  is  bordered  in  the  same  way  as  on  the  south,  by  a  line  of  hills, 
called  the  North  Downs,  parallel  and  similar  to  the  South 
Downs.  Its  central  line  is  the  watershed  of  the  rivers  flowing 
into  the  Thames  and  the  Channel.  The  principal  rivers  are  the 
Arun  and  the  Ouse,  which  flow  into  the  Channel  near  Arundel 
and  Newhaven  respectively,  and  the  Wey  and  the  Mole,  which 
join  the  Thames  at  its  great  bend  between  Windsor  and  London. 
To  the  west  and  the  east  the  rivers  flow  into  the  ramifications 
of  the  sea  opposite  the  Isle  of  Wight  on  the  one  hand,  and 
on  the  other  into  the  Medway  and  the  small  neighbouring 
rivers  of  Kent.  In  this  way  the  elevated  plain  between  the 
Channel,  the  Thames,  the  rivers  of  the  inlets  opposite  the  Isle 
of  Wight,  and  the  rivers  of  Kent,  forms  a  clearly  defined  quadri- 
lateral, a  region  absolutely  distinct  from  the  surrounding 
country.  It  is  liberally  watered,  as  we  have  j  ust  seen .  Although 
it  is  surrounded  by  chalk  hills,  it  is  composed  of  fertile  soil, 
clay,  sand,  limestone,  and  an  extraordinary  number  of  animal 
and  vegetable  fossils,  which  were  deposited  in  this  large  area 
by  some  giant  river  of  ancient  geological  ages.  At  the  time 
of  the  Saxon  invasion  a  splendid  growth  of  forest  was  evidence 
of  its  fertility,  and  made  it  seem  like  an  oasis.  On  that  account 
the  name  of  Weald — that  is  to  say,  "  the  forest,"  from  an  old 


228  PREDOMINANCE  OF  THE  SAXONS  OVER 

Saxon  word  identified  with  the  German  wald — had  clung  to  it 
par  excellence.  At  the  end  of  the  ninth  century  its  wooded 
surface  still  measured  not  less  than  a  hundred  miles  from  west 
to  east,  by  twenty-five  miles  from  south  to  north.1 

Those  are  the  main  features  of  the  physical  structure  of 
this  region.  The  emigrant  Saxons  must  have  seen  that  it 
could  be  converted  into  excellent  arable  land  if  it  were  cleared. 
Cut  off  and  shut  in  as  it  was  by  inhospitable  shores,  by  repellent 
cliffs,  and  covered  with  virgin -forests,  it  could  not  serve  as  a 
market  for  merchants  like  the  Jutes,  but  offered  the  true 
peasants  of  the  Saxon  plain  a  fertile  piece  of  land,  isolated  and 
uninhabited,  where  they  pictured  themselves  developing  estates 
after  their  own  heart. 

Nothing  is  so  significant  in  Social  Science  as  the  nature 
of  the  places  where  people  settle.  It  at  once  reveals  the  essential 
characteristics  of  the  constitution  of  a  race.  Just  as  animal 
and  vegetable  species,  so  do  social  species  betray  their  natural 
aptitudes  in  their  choice  of  the  conditions  under  which  they 
prefer  to  live.  We  have  just  seen  this  illustrated  in  the  case 
of  the  Saxons  and  Jutes.  If  we  had  nothing  to  enlighten  us 
on  this  head  but  the  difference  of  the  places  in  which  they 
chose  to  settle  in  Great  Britain,  we  could  judge  of  the  funda- 
mental difference  of  their  occupations  and  their  main  interests. 

The  Jutes  kept  the  name  of  Kent  for  the  territory  they 
conquered.  It  was  known  to  merchants  and  navigators  before 
their  time.  The  Saxons  gave  their  own  name  to  the  land  they 
had  just  acquired.  They  called  it  Southern  Saxony,  Sussex. 
By  giving  it  the  designation  of  southern,  they  signified  their 
independence  with  regard  to  those  Saxons  who  had  taken  part 
in  the  conquest  of  Kent.  Moreover,  it  was  not  long  before  other 
bands  began  to  arrive,  and  they  all  took  names  which  indicated 
the  relative  positions  of  their  settlements  by  the  points  of  the 
compass  :  Sussex,  Essex,  Wessex,  Middlesex — that  is  to  say, 
Southern  Saxony,  Eastern  Saxony,  Western  Saxony,  and 
Middle  Saxony.  The  elevated  plain  we  have  just  described, 
and  which  the  Saxon  colony  in  question  gradually  filled  from 
end  to  end,  still  bears  the  name  of  Sussex  on  the  slope  towards 

1  See  Arthur  de  la  Borderie,  Les  Bretons  insulaire*,  p.  40 ;  Atlas,  Vidal- 
Lablache,  p.  106;  Carte  physique  des  lies  Britanniques ;  Foncin's  Atlas  General, 
p.  25  ;  Grande-Bretagne  du  VIe  au  XI Ie  siede. 


CELTS  AND  JUTES  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN     229 

the  Channel,  and  the  analogous  name  of  Surrey — that  is  to  say, 
Kingdom  of  the  South ;  Suth  Rice  in  Saxon — on  the  slope 
towards  the  Thames. 

The  settlement  of  the  Saxons  in  Sussex,  in  so  far  as  the 
fundamental  and  essential  features  are  concerned,  presents 
the  spectacle  which  was  reproduced  twelve  hundred  years 
afterwards  in  the  first  occupation  of  America  by  the  same 
race.  Agriculturists  belonging  to  the  particularist  form  of 
society  came  to  the  United  States,  just  as  they  did  to  Sussex, 
in  the  track  of  merchants,  in  order  to  found  free  estates  on  a 
wooded  coast  in  a  country  inhabited  by  restless,  warring  tribes 
accustomed  to  the  system  of  clan  government,  who  were  driven 
out  in  spite  of  their  natural  bravery,  or  else  withdrew  of  their 
own  accord  from  an  unconquerable  dislike  of  a  toilsome  seden- 
tary life.  The  new-comers  were  not  slow  in  spreading 
across  the  immense  continent  as  far  as  the  foot  of  the  great 
chains  of  mountains  in  the  far  west,  making  the  natives  recoil 
before  them,  just  as  the  Saxons  on  the  small  British  continent 
quickly  drove  back  the  Celts  to  the  foot  of  the  high  mountains 
of  the  west.  And  though  the  new  American  population  was 
composed  of  many  different  European  nationalities,  the  par- 
ticularist group  won  the  lead  in  the  end  and  gave  its  form  to  all 
the  rest.  Exactly  the  same  thing  happened  in  Great  Britain, 
where  other  tribes  came  after  the  Saxons,  as  we  shall  see,  but 
were  unable  to  oust  the  Saxons  with  their  peculiar  form  of 
society. 

Thus  the  same  race  recommenced  the  same  enterprise 
after  a  lapse  of  more  than  a  thousand  years.  Only  it  was 
carried  on  in  a  far  larger  theatre,  on  a  far  larger  scale,  and  with 
better  equipments.  For  that  reason  events  in  America  have 
assumed  more  formidable  proportions  and  have  progressed 
at  a  far  higher  speed.  But  in  both  cases  the  results  have  been 
the  same  in  this  sense,  that  they  are  of  the  same  kind  and 
attest  the  same  social  forces. 

If  we  wish  to  understand  the  history  of  England,  we  must 
picture  this  little  continent  as  "  America  in  miniature,"  which 
Providence  modelled  on  a  small  scale  and  placed  near  the 
Old  World  so  that  the  Saxon  race  might  use  it  as  its  first  field 
of  development,  and  find  it  proportioned  to  the  feebleness  of 
its  first  efforts. 


230    PREDOMINANCE  OF  THE  SAXONS  OVER 

Let  us  first  examine  the  settlement  of  the  first  colony  of 
pure  Saxons  in  Sussex.  We  have  described  the  territory 
already. 

The  expedition  landed  at  Cymenesora  (Selsey)  on  the  coast 
opposite  the  Isle  of  AVight,  "  quite  close  to  a  hamlet  now  called 
Wittering,"  x  in  the  south-west  corner  of  the  present  county 
of  Sussex.  When  rumours  of  their  landing  got  abroad,  the 
Britons  of  the  neighbourhood  straightway  made  an  attack  upon 
the  Saxons.  There  were  several  British  chiefs  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood. But  instead  of  combining  their  movements  and 
giving  each  other  mutual  support,  they  came  one  after  the 
other  and  hurled  themselves  in  separate  bands  upon  the  Saxons, 
who,  on  the  contrary,  formed  themselves  into  a  serried  phalanx, 
and  found  no  difficulty  in  defeating  their  undisciplined  bands. 
So  all  the  Britons  were  conquered  one  after  the  other.2  They 
were  not  merely  repulsed,  but  suffered  severely,  and  when  they 
were  attacked  in  their  turn,  they  soon  had  no  place  of  refuge 
left  except  the  "  Forest,"  the  Weald,  behind  the  South  Downs.3 

"  There  they  reassembled  like  a  swarm  of  bees  :  congregati 
sunt  igitur  Britanni  quasi  apes"  says  Henry  of  Huntingdon. 
One  can  almost  imagine  one  hears  their  confused  buzzing  in 
the  depths  of  the  forest ! 

The  Saxons  beat  the  woods  systematically,  and  the  Britons, 
who  probably  emerged  on  the  side  near  Kent,  thought  it  as 
well  to  avoid  receiving  the  attack  of  the  enemy  when  they 
appeared  in  large  numbers,  and  so  shut  themselves  up  in  an 
ancient  Roman  citadel  on  the  outskirts  of  the  forest :  it  was 
the  citadel  of  Anderida,  Anderidce  castrum  ;  in  Saxon,  Andredes 
ceaster  (Pevensey).  The  siege  began.  Famine  ensued.  When 
the  Britons  were  half  dead  with  starvation,  the  Saxons  made 
an  assault.  The  stronghold  was  taken  by  main  force.  All 
those  within  perished,  and  there  remained  not  a  Briton  to  tell 
the  tale  :  "  inter fecerunt  omnes,  qui  id  incolerent,  adeo  ut  ne 
unus  Brito  ibi  super stes  fuerit."  4 

That  is  the  way  in  which  Sussex  was  cleared  of  its  inhabitants. 
The  Saxons  rased  Anderida  to  the  ground.  In  the  twelfth 
century,  it  seems,  its  ruins  were  still  visible  in  a  deserted  spot ; 

1  Reclus,  vol.  iv.  p.  472,  map  103. 

2  Henry  of  Huntingdon,  Chronicon  Saxonicum. 

3  A.  de  la  Borderie,  p.  40.  4  Chronicon  Saxonicum. 


CELTS  AND  JUTES  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN    231 

but  the  precise  situation  of  the  place  is  now  a  problem  which 
experts  alone  can  solve. 

The  small  colony  in  Sussex,  which  was  firmly  established 
in  its  safe  retreat,  was  only  an  advance  guard.  It  had  drawn 
its  most  eager  and  adventurous  recruits  from  the  Saxon  plain. 
But  once  the  movement  was  set  on  foot,  emigration  went  on 
at  a  great  pace  on  a  large  scale  ;  and  the  emigrants,  instead 
of  looking  for  a  well-protected  place  like  Sussex,  went  farther 
along  the  coast  to  the  westwards,  where  the  country  opens  out 
into  broad  expanses,  stretching  from  the  inlets  opposite  the 
Isle  of  Wight  to  the  hills  of  Cornwall,  and  forms  a  larger  plain 
between  the  Thames  and  the  Channel,  which  gradually  get 
farther  apart.  This  region,  which  at  the  present  day  includes 
Hampshire,  Berkshire,  Wiltshire,  Dorsetshire,  and  Somerset- 
shire, was  called  Wessex — that  is  to  say,  Western  Saxony.1 

The  second  expedition  of  pure  Saxons,  which  continued  to 
be  increased  by  fresh  arrivals  for  more  than  thirty  years,  was 
headed  by  Cerdic,  another  Odinid  leader.  According  to 
Saxon  tradition,  his  genealogical  tree  was  correctly  drawn, 
and  showed  him  to  be  a  direct  descendant  of  Odin  in  the  ninth 
degree. 

He  landed  in  495  opposite  the  Isle  of  Wight  at  Caldshot, 
or  Caldshore — that  is  to  say,  Cerdic' s  shore.  He  was  received 
by  the  Britons  in  exactly  the  same  way  as  the  Sussex  colony 
had  been  received,  and  he  succeeded  in  repelling  them  in  a 
similar  way.  At  first  he  occupied  Hampshire,  north  of  South- 
ampton (which  name  means,  town  in  the  south  of  Hamp- 
shire). So  his  land  lay  between  Sussex  and  the  valley  of  the 
Avon,  where  Salisbury  now  stands.  Some  thirty  years  later 
the  colony  spread  from  there  westwards  as  far  as  the  lower  basin 
of  the  Severn  and  the  neck  of  Cornwall,  and  in  the  north  as 
far  as  the  most  northerly  bend  in  the  Thames,  where  Oxford 
is  situated.  It  was  no  small  expansion. 

There  was  a  considerable  difference  in  size  between  this 
large  colony,  which  occupied  one  of  the  most  remarkable  regions 
of  England,  and  the  small  colony  in  Sussex,  or  the  little  settle- 
ment in  Kent.  It  is  therefore  easy  to  understand  how  it  came 
about  that  Sussex  became  absorbed  by  Wessex.  The  change 
took  place  almost  at  once  and  without  any  disturbance.  As 

1  Foncin's  Atlas  General,  25. 


232     PREDOMINANCE  OF  THE  SAXONS  OVER 

for  the  kingdom  of  Kent,  its  destinies  were  limited,  to  judge  by 
what  we  already  know  of  the  life  of  the  Jutes,  and  about  a 
hundred  years  after  the  death  of  Cerdic  it  too  was  joined  to 
Wessex  after  suffering  several  changes  of  fortune  (645  ;  final 
union  in  823).  Moreover,  before  his  death  (534)  Cerdic  secured 
for  his  colony  the  free  use  of  the  sea  by  recapturing  the  Isle 
of  Wight  (530),  probably  from  the  Britons,  who  had  apparently 
again  taken  up  their  abode  there.  According  to  Bede,  he 
exterminated  all  the  natives  he  found  on  the  island. 

The  occupation  of  Great  Britain  by  the  Saxons  really  dates 
from  the  time  of  these  decisive  expansions  of  the  race  under 
the  Odinid  chief  Cerdic,  the  contemporary,  and,  in  more 
respects  than  one,  the  rival  of  Clovis.  We  shall  find,  in  fact, 
that  the  whole  social  history  of  the  English  springs  not  from 
Hengist,  nor  the  Jutes  of  Kent,  nor  from  the  Saxons  of  Sussex, 
but  from  those  of  Wessex. 

The  colony  of  Wessex,  however,  had  no  weak  party  to  deal 
with.  The  prowess  of  the  renowned  King  Arthur,  the  Celtic 
hero,  and  of  his  knights  of  the  Round  Table,  was  exerted  against 
it.  The  grandeur  of  the  attack  made  by  the  vigorous  Saxons 
of  Wessex  must  have  increased  the  merit  in  men's  minds  of 
those  who  attempted  resistance,  though  in  vain.  That  is  the 
source  of  the  epic  splendour  of  the  legend  of  Arthur.  Perhaps 
we  do  not  take  this  sufficiently  into  account  when  we  see  with 
astonishment  the  proportions  which  the  hero  has  assumed  in 
the  legends  of  the  Britons ;  for  though  he  may  be  a  man  of 
genius  in  his  way,  his  genius  is  of  a  thoroughly  Celtic  type. 
Of  course  the  loss  of  the  large  territory  of  Wessex  must  have 
been  a  far  more  serious  and  decisive  disaster  for  the  Britons 
than  the  loss  of  the  extreme  end  of  Kent  or  of  the  secluded 
plain  of  Sussex.  It  was  the  death-struggle  for  them,  as  the  fall 
of  Ilion  was  for  the  Trojans  ;  that  agony  found  expression  in  a 
national  epic,  which  has  all  through  a  touch  of  the  boastful 
intermingled  with  its  pathetic  strain,  as  is  sometimes  the  case 
with  descriptions  of  the  heroism  of  inferior  races,  which  are 
touching  but  at  the  same  time  tinged  with  vaingloriousness. 
Anyone  who  takes  the  trouble  to  read  the  songs  of  the  old 
bards  of  that  time,  will  find  in  them  a  poetical  inspiration 
which  might  easily  be  adapted  to  the  war  of  independence  of 
any  noble  and  valiant  tribe  of  American  Indians. 


CELTS  AND  JUTES  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN      233 

In  spite  of  the  prowess  of  Arthur  and  his  knights,  Wessex 
was  swept  clear  of  Britons.  The  way  in  which  it  was  done 
was  very  simple.  As  soon  as  the  Saxons  were  in  need  of  land 
for  cultivation  they  encroached  on  the  enemy's  territory.  The 
Britons  evacuated  the  land  of  their  own  accord — a  method  of 
warfare  practised  by  nomads.  They  would  then  return  prepared 
for  the  attack,  and  would  fall  upon  the  Saxons  unexpectedly. 
The  latter  contented  themselves  by  standing  their  ground  and 
keeping  the  conquered  territory.  The  Britons,  overcome  with 
surprise  on  seeing  that  the  enemy  whom  they  had  been  unable 
to  drive  back  did  not  pursue  them  in  their  turn,  considered  the 
fight  indecisive,  or,  more  often,  a  victory  to  their  own  side. 
Much  of  Arthur's  glory  may  be  attributed  to  the  belief  of  the 
bards  in  these  illusive  victories.  And  this  idea  still  persists. 
For  a  Breton  of  the  present  day,  a  distinguished  historian, 
M.  Arthur  de  la  Borderie,  considers  that  Celtic  arms  won 
a  victory  every  time  that  the  Saxons  halted  at  a  new 
point  in  their  onward  march.  But  though  success  follows 
success,  he  has  to  admit  that  the  land  was  evacuated  by  the 
Britons. 

The  conquered  Britons  not  only  took  refuge  in  the  Cornish 
hills  and  in  the  Welsh  mountains  beyond  the  Severn,  but 
passed  over  in  a  body  to  the  other  side  of  the  Channel,  to  Armorica, 
and  the  name  of  Brittany,  which  that  part  of  Gaul  still  bears, 
is  due  to  that  famous  exodus.  Thus  the  whole  territory  of 
Wessex  was  evacuated  by  the  Britons.  Modern  historians, 
who  have  been  very  much  puzzled  at  not  finding  any  trace  of 
a  Celtic  population  in  the  midst  of  the  Saxons,  have  conceived 
the  idea  that  the  reason  why  the  Celts  disappeared  from  history 
was  that  they  had  joined  with  the  conquerors  in  returning  to 
a  pagan  worship,  which  must  seem  highly  improbable  to  anyone 
who  knows  the  social  and  religious  condition  of  the  Celts.  But 
the  same  authors  are  obliged  to  confess  that  there  are  no  traces 
of  any  such  thing.  A  small  knowledge  of  Social  Science  would 
have  shown  them  that  there  is  no  need  to  supplement  historical 
evidence. 

Saxon  territory  in  England  was  increased  at  the  same  time 
(530)  by  the  formation  of  a  fresh  colony  to  the  north  of  Kent, 
beyond  the  Thames.  This  additional  colony,  which,  was  not  of 
much  importance  and  was  absorbed  by  Wessex  like  the  others, 


234    PREDOMINANCE  OF  THE  SAXONS  OVER 

gave  the  name  of  Essex — that  is  to  say,  Eastern  Saxony — to 
the  basins  of  some  of  the  small  rivers  along  the  coast  to  the 
north  of  the  Thames ;  and  the  name  of  Middlesex — that  is  to 
say,  Middle  Saxony — to  a  region  now  covered  by  London,  which 
was  also  on  the  north  of  the  Thames. 

Now  that  we  have  a  complete  knowledge  of  the  territory 
originally  occupied  by  the  Saxons  in  Great  Britain,  and  of  the 
way  in  which  they  got  possession  of  it,  we  must  examine  the 
institutions  which  the  conquerors  founded  on  those  rich  and 
empty  lands.  They  were  of  the  utmost  simplicity.  They 
were  summed  up,  as  must  have  been  anticipated,  in  the 
private  and  independent  estate. 

The  land  was  cleared  of  its  inhabitants  :  the  colonists  created 
estates  to  suit  their  own  fancy,  as  they  had  done  in  the  Saxon 
plain.  They  found  no  difficulty  in  maintaining  their  inde- 
pendence each  on  his  own  estate.  The  Odinid  chief  who  had 
brought  them  could  look  for  no  support  except  from  them  :  he 
did  not  find  himself  surrounded  by  a  population  that  was  ready 
to  accept  the  communal  system  of  government  and  on  whom 
he  could  depend  for  support  if  he  wished  to  domineer.  So 
his  position  was  singularly  precarious  and  restricted,  and  we 
shall  see  that  so  long  as  the  Saxon  race  remained  pure  it  always 
reduced  its  ruling  authorities  to  a  similar  position.  The  Odinid 
chief  was  simply  considered  as  a  "  specialist,"  who,  of  his 
own  accord,  undertook  the  office,  which  was,  moreover,  to  his 
own  advantage,  of  stirring  the  people  to  combined  action,  in 
cases  where,  at  a  given  moment,  the  help  of  every  individual 
was  required.  People  were  quite  ready  to  respond  to  this 
appeal  when  it  seemed  justifiable.  They  acted,  in  fact,  like 
people  who  are  anxious  to  improve  the  public  health,  and  who 
would  listen  willingly  to  an  expert  physician  and  conform  to 
the  general  measures  he  proposed  by  acquiescing  freely  in  them 
as  individuals. 

Even  when  it  was  a  question  of  war — which  was,  as  it 
were,  the  Odinid  chief's  speciality — their  action  was  the  same. 
"When  the  sovereign  was  stirred  by  the  necessity  for  defence  or 
the  desire  to  make  war,"  says  Guizot,  "  he  sent  a  messenger  to 
the  villages  and  through  the  country  side,  who  carried  a  naked 
sword  and  shouted,  '  Let  him  who  doth  not  wish  to  be  ac- 
counted a  man  of  nought  leave  his  house  and  come  to  the 


CELTS  AND  JUTES  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN    235 

battle  ! '  "  i  And  those  came  who  chose.  And  more  than  once, 
as  history  shows,  no  one  came.  That  was  what  happened,  for 
instance,  to  the  famous  Alfred  the  Great,  the  first  time  he 
attempted  to  march  against  the  Danish  invaders. 

The  best  method  by  which  the  chief  could  stir  the  people  to 
act  in  common  was  to  call  them  to  an  assembly,  to  a  "  meeting  " 
as  we  should  say  nowadays,  and  debate  with  them  upon  the 
enterprise  in  question.  But  in  that  case  too  only  those  came 
who  chose.  And  in  complete  contrast  to  the  Celts,  who  were 
men  belonging  to  clans,  and  felt  that  they  were  bound  by  their 
fidelity  to  the  community  to  respond  to  their  chief's  appeal 
with  alacrity — I  was  going  to  say  with  fury — the  Saxons  did 
not  put  themselves  out  to  go  to  an  assembly  unless  they  indi- 
vidually felt  that  it  was  to  their  interest  to  do  so.  So  the 
Assembly  was  a  meeting  not  of  subjects  or  faithful  followers,  but 
of  freemen,  who  thought  it  to  their  own  interest  to  be  present. 

And  as  the  estate  was  the  sole  means  of  support  of  every 
individual,  it  absorbed  the  greater  part  of  their  interest,  so 
that  it  very  soon  came  about  that  those  who  had  to  work  upon 
their  estates  themselves,  or  supervise  the  working  of  them  in 
every  detail,  considered  themselves  exempt  from  the  necessity 
of  going  to  waste  their  time  at  national  meetings.  In  Switzer- 
land I  have  noticed  that  the  same  reason  deters  many  peasants 
from  attending  the  Landsgemeinde,  or  National  Assembly  in 
May.  Historians  consider  this  indifference  as  highly  character- 
istic. It  became  so  common  that  the  Assembly,  which  was 
at  first  known  as  the  Folkmot — that  is  to  say,  the  meeting  of  the 
people — gradually  took  the  name  of  Witenagemot — that  is  to 
say,  the  meeting  of  experts,  of  wise  men,  of  those  who  were 
specially  competent,  and  were  the  natural  representatives  of 
men  of  their  own  standing. 

Thus  the  Witenagemot  was  composed  on  the  one  hand  of 
rich  landowners,  people  with  more  leisure,  who  were  more 
interested  in  passing  events  by  the  very  reason  of  the  importance 
of  their  affairs,  and,  on  the  other,  of  men  of  distinction,  of  the 
wisest  and  most  expert  of  the  small  landowners.  The  Assembly 
took  its  name  of  Witenagemot  from  the  latter  category,  which 
was  tacitly  supported  by  public  suffrage.  The  popular  name 
for  these  unofficial  experts  was  Witan,  an  old  word  analogous 
1  Histoire  d' Angleterre,  p.  39. 


236    PREDOMINANCE  OF  THE  SAXONS  OVER 

to  wiseman.  The  rich  proprietors  were  called  Tliegns  or 
Ealdormen,  according  to  the  importance  of  their  estates.  The 
Ealdorman  was  richer  than  the  Thegn,  who  was  himself  a 
landowner  of  importance. 

The  Witans,  Thegns,  and  Ealdormen  thus  formed,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  the  public  and  national  Assembly ;  but  every 
Saxon  had  the  right  to  attend  it. 

There  was  clearly  no  military  aristocracy,  no  aristocracy  of 
birth  ;  there  were  simply  landowners  with  equal  rights,  who, 
of  their  own  accord,  left  the  direction  of  public  affairs  to  the 
care  of  the  richest,  and  of  those  most  deeply  concerned  and 
most  skilled  in  affairs  of  public  interest,  and  far  preferred  to 
devote  themselves  to  their  own  private  affairs,  to  their  estate, 
when  it  demanded  all  their  attention.  There  was  no  trace 
whatsoever  of  feudalism,  of  the  subordination  of  one  land- 
owner to  another,  of  one  estate  to  another.  Nor  is  there 
anything  surprising  in  this ;  for  there  was  no  reason,  no  need, 
for  creating  the  feudal  system  among  the  Saxons  of  England, 
seeing  that  nothing  prevented  them  from  being  free,  and  that 
their  sovereign  governed  them  so  little. 

By  a  general  agreement,  resulting  from  a  succession  of 
deliberations  held  by  the  Witenagemot,  the  custom  was  estab- 
lished of  levying  three  taxes  to  pay  for  objects  of  public  necessity: 
(1)  the  construction  and  maintenance  of  fortresses  ;  (2)  the 
construction  and  maintenance  of  bridges  ;  (3)  the  housing  and 
feeding  of  men  who  carried  on  war  whenever  it  occurred. 

The  Odinid  chief,  the  sovereign,  appointed  one  of  the  great 
landowners  in  each  locality  of  a  certain  area  to  see  to  the 
collection  of  the  subsidies  agreed  upon  :  he  was  the  sheriff. 
His  name  was  derived  from  shire — that  is  to  say,  part,  portion, 
division — the  name  given  to  the  area  of  land  he  had  to  supervise. 

As  for  justice,  the  neighbours  undertook  to  see  it  done.  In 
order  to  secure  justice  being  done,  each  shire  was  divided 
into  groups  of  ten  or  of  a  hundred  estates.  According  to  the 
importance  of  the  case,  it  was  tried  by  groups  of  ten  or  groups 
of  a  hundred.  In  each  group  one  of  the  landowners  was 
appointed  by  common  consent  to  be  responsible  for  the  manage- 
ment of  the  trials,  to  receive  accusations  and  choose  juries 
from  among  the  other  proprietors,  who,  under  his  direction, 
judged  the  cases.  If  the  group  did  not  succeed  in  catching 


CELTS  AND  JUTES  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN     237 

the  fugitive  criminal,  the  victim  of  the  crime  was  compensated 
for  his  loss  or  injury  by  the  group,  for  the  reason  that  the 
criminal,  as  being  a  member  of  the  group,  formed  part  of  the 
body  of  ten  or  a  hundred  whose  duty  it  was  to  see  justice  done. 

But  the  same  thing  happened  in  this  case  as  with  the 
Witenagemot :  the  Saxons  had  so  little  taste  for  public  affairs 
that  they  very  soon  left  the  landowner  they  had  chosen  to  judge 
the  cases  alone,  knowing  that  he  was  capable  of  doing  it  well 
since  he  had  been  appointed  by  public  opinion.  It  often 
happened  even  that  they  neglected  to  choose  anyone  among 
them  to  perform  these  duties,  as  they  did  not  feel  that  the 
organisation  of  justice  was  a  pressing  need.  Offences  were 
probably  not  very  common,  or  were  settled  in  a  friendly 
manner  by  those  concerned,  a  method  which  the  Saxons 
were  always  inclined  to  adopt. 

Hence  it  gradually  came  about  that  the  sovereign  officially 
appointed  the  proprietor  who  was  considered  capable  of 
administering  justice  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  neighbourhood. 

Landowners  holding  this  office  were  called  magistrates,  and 
they  were  chosen  by  the  sovereign  from  among  the  local  land- 
owners after  being  designated  by  public  opinion. 

We  could  not  very  easily  find  anything  so  different  from 
feudalism  and  so  far  removed  from  the  truste  ! 

These  institutions,  as  we  shall  see,  have  endured  through 
all  periods  and  all  crises  in  England,  because,  even  when  it 
happened  that  some  sovereign  made  an  attempt  to  suppress 
them,  they  sprang  to  life  again  as  being  the  only  means  by  which 
any  public  power  could  be  organised  so  as  not  to  interfere  with 
the  complete  independence  of  every  private  man,  who  was  of  his 
own  choice  self-sufficient  on  his  estate,  and  had  no  help  from  a 
suzerain  or  from  royal  government  —  that  is  to  say,  from 
feudalism,  or  from  a  truste. 

This  contrivance  was,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  natural  out- 
come of  the  essential  characteristic  of  the  Saxon's  position, 
independence  on  his  own  estate,  as  we  have  just  seen  ;  he  had 
no  need  of  a  more  complicated  or  more  powerful  form  of  govern- 
ment, which  would  only  have  annoyed  and  worried  him. 

Such  being  the  accepted  institutions,  the  advantage  which 
the  Saxons  derived  from  the  richness  of  English  soil  was  that 
they  always  had  among  them  some  landowners  who  had 


238  PREDOMINANCE  OF  THE  SAXONS 

succeeded  so  well  in  the  management  of  their  estates  that  they 
had  opportunities  of  getting  to  understand  and  of  supporting 
the  public  and  national  interests,  which  demanded  superior 
abilities  such  as  were  developed  in  private  life. 

It  is  in  this  way  that  the  government  of  the  country,  even 
at  a  time  when  its  range  of  interests  has  widened  so  enormously 
as  to  embrace  the  two  worlds,  has  not  escaped  from  the  hands 
of  the  class  of  free  landowners,  who  all  act  on  their  own  initiative 
and  not  according  to  the  obligations  imposed  upon  them  by 
feudalism  or  by  the  domination  of  public  administration. 
Each  free  individual  estate  governed  of  its  own  accord  without 
feudalism  and  without  a  truste. 

But  there  is  something  of  interest  to  see  besides  the  establish- 
ment of  this  pure  Saxon  type  and  its  development  in  a  rich 
and  empty  land  :  our  main  interest  is  in  observing  how  it 
triumphed  over  all  the  obstacles  which  events  cast  in  its  road. 

We  shall  do  this  by  watching  the  successive  encounters  of  the 
Saxons  with  the  Angles,  the  Danes,  and  the  Normans  upon 
English  soil. 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  SAXONS  OVER  THE 
ANGLES  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN 

THE  emigrants  from  the  Saxon  plain,  led  by  their  two  most 
brilliant  Odinid  chiefs,  Clovis  and  Cerdic,  succeeded  in 
spreading  all  over  the  greater  part  of  Northern  Gaul  and 
Southern  Britain  by  the  beginning  of  the  sixth  century.  After 
that  they  were  left  to  follow  their  own  devices.  The  Odinids 
then  proceeded  to  stir  up  another  tribe,  the  tribe  of  Angles, 
who  had  congregated  outside  the  Saxon  plain  on  the  north, 
but  who  were  not  Saxons. 

The  Angles  belonged  to  the  Gothic  type — that  is  to  say,  to 
the  type  of  that  portion  of  the  Old  Germans  who,  though  they 
had  not  left  the  basin  of  the  Baltic,  had  nevertheless  managed 
to  perfect  their  knowledge  of  agriculture  by  finding  their  way  to 
the  rich  and  secluded  lands  of  the  large  Scandinavian  islands 
and  peninsulas.  The  tribe  in  question  occupied  the  eastern 
slope  of  Schleswig.  A  trace  of  it  still  remains  in  the  name  of 
the  country  called  Angeln,  which  was  the  centre  of  its  activity 
and  is  situated  between  the  fiord  of  Schleswig  and  that  of 
Flensborg.1 

In  order  to  make  their  way  to  Great  Britain,  the  Angles  had 
only  to  descend  the  western  slope  of  Schleswig,  a  heathery 
country  of  peat  and  sand,  utterly  different  from  the  eastern 
slope,  and  take  ship  on  the  shore  of  the  North  Sea.  The  English 
coast,  where  they  were  destined  to  land  and  leave  their  name, 
lay  before  them. 

The  invasion  of  the  Angles  had  none  of  the  characteristics 

of  the  Saxon  colonisations,  but  resembled  the  great  Germanic 

migrations.      The    expedition   was   not    composed   of   a   few 

emigrants  who  were  organised  in  bands  for  the  occasion  and 

1  See  Hachette's  Atlas  manuel,  map  28. 

239 


240  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  SAXONS 

settled  in  succession  in  whatever  localities  suited  their  taste, 
forming  small  distinct  kingdoms  and  co-operating  with  each 
other  only  when  compelled  by  necessity  and  only  amalga- 
mating by  slow  degrees  ;  but  it  was  the  "  flitting  "  of  an  entire 
tribe.  Its  old  home  was  left  absolutely  empty  ;  it  removed 
in  a  body,  and  went  elsewhere  to  create  a  single  kingdom  with 
as  extensive  boundaries  as  possible — a  single  kingdom,  but 
one  which  soon  became  divided. 

The  Angles,  in  fact,  belonged  to  the  patriarchal  and  com- 
munal form  of  society  like  the  Goths,  and,  for  the  matter  of  that, 
like  all  the  Germans  of  the  basin  of  the  Baltic.  We  shall  see 
how  the  characteristics  of  that  form  of  society  are  exhibited 
throughout  the  whole  of  their  short  history. 

Unlike  the  Saxons,  they  attacked  Great  Britain  on  the 
north,  at  the  present  frontier  between  England  and  Scotland. 
After  making  a  few  attempts  to  land,  and  even  to  settle  at  points 
farther  south  on  the  east  coast,  they  succeeded  in  making  their 
way  up  the  Tyne,  upon  which  Newcastle  now  stands  ;  then 
they  went  up  the  Tweed,  which  is  a  little  farther  north,  and 
finally  up  the  Tees,  which  is  a  little  farther  south.  The  Britons 
of  the  lowlands  were  surrounded  by  the  new-comers,  who  did 
not  get  a  very  firm  hold  of  the  land,  and  they  proceeded  to 
mix  with  them.  The  Britons  of  the  highlands  defended  them- 
selves to  the  death.  But  after  numerous  bloody  encounters,  the 
Angles,  who  were  led  by  clever  Odinid  chiefs,  and  were  better 
armed  than  their  opponents,  for  they  were  far  more  highly 
civilised,  remained  masters  of  the  land  between  the  Tweed 
and  the  Tees. 

The  last  episode  of  their  conquest  is  confusingly  like  the 
drama  of  the  fortress  of  Anderida,  which  made  the  Saxons 
masters  of  the  land  of  Sussex.  The  Britons  did  not  give 
the  lie  to  their  character.  Hemmed  in  on  the  one  side  by  the 
invading  Angles,  and  on  the  other  by  the  Picts  and  Scots, 
whom  the  Angles  had  taken  care  to  secure  as  their  allies, 
they  congregated  in  a  spot  where  their  enemies  happened 
to  join  forces.  It  was  in  the  narrow  neck  of  land,  the 
kind  of  isthmus  between  the  Clyde  and  the  Forth,  which 
Septimus  Severus  had  closed  by  a  great  wall.  Close  to  the 
rampart  near  the  mouth  of  the  Clyde  was  an  ancient  castle 
furnished  with  towers,  the  largest  remains  of  that  fortified 


OVER  THE  ANGLES  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN    241 

line  left  standing  ;  it  was  called  the  fortress  of  Caltraeth.  The 
Britons  assembled  there  and  in  the  outskirts  all  along  the 
Roman  entrenchment.  "  In  the  midst  of  merry-making — for 
it  was  a  national  festival,  in  which  several  days  were  usually 
passed  in  feasting  and  drunken  scenes — they  were  unexpectedly 
attacked.  The  fight  was  fierce,  and  was  carried  on  for  seven 
days  outside  the  fortress,  and  then  within  it,  till  all  the  defenders 
were  dead  at  their  posts.  Three  hundred  and  sixty-three 
chiefs  wearing  the  gold  collar,  the  badge  of  the  chiefs  of  the 
highest  rank  among  the  Britons,  had  set  out  for  Caltraeth 
with  their  men  :  only  three  returned,  among  whom  was  Aneurin, 
one  of  the  most  celebrated  bards.  He  composed  a  poem  on  the 
occasion  of  that  great  national  disaster,  which  is  still  extant."  l 

Once  they  had  secured  the  three  valleys  of  the  Tweed,  the 
Tyne,  and  the  Tees,  which  border  on  the  sea  and  served  them  as 
entrance  and  exit,  the  Angles  did  not  fear  to  spread  to  the 
south  like  a  flood,  over  the  broad  lands  of  York,  now  the  county 
of  Yorkshire,  an  inland  plain  whose  rivers  flow  towards  the 
centre  of  the  mainland,  and  which  is  separated  from  the  sea 
by  a  long  line  of  inhospitable  hills.  The  northern  part  of  the 
coast  consists  of  crumbling  cliffs,  while  the  southern  is  nothing 
but  an  accumulation  of  mud  -  banks.  The  invaders  went 
southwards,  and  spread  over  this  large  basin  as  far  as  the  estuary 
of  the  Humber,  which  forms  its  outlet,  and  up  to  the  river  Don, 
a  tributary  of  the  Humber.  They  formed  one  large  state,  to 
which  they  gave  the  name  of  Northumberland  or  Northumbria 
—that  is  to  say,  the  land  north  of  the  Humber. 

Their  sole  chief  was  Ida,  a  descendant  of  Odin  in  the  ninth 
degree.  His  Odinid  character  comes  out  very  clearly.  He 
brought  his  twelve  sons  with  him,  a  fact  which  accentuates 
his  patriarchal  and  communal  character. 

All  this  took  place  just  a  century  after  Hengist's  and 
Horsa's  first  landing,  and  twelve  or  thirteen  years  after  the 
death  of  Cerdic  (547).  It  is  clear  that  the  Odinids  were  still  in 
their  vigour,  and  were  not  even  then  at  the  end  of  their  tether. 

On  Ida's  death,  Northumbria  was  divided  (559).  No  such 
thing  had  ever  occurred  in  any  of  the  pure  Saxon  settlements  in 
Great  Britain.  Two  kingdoms  were  formed  whose  names  were 

1  Augustin  Thierry,  Histoire  de  la  Conquete  de  V Angleterre,  vol.  i.  bk.  i. 
p.  26. 

16 


242  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  SAXONS 

taken  from  the  ancient  local  names  :  the  one  called  Bernicia 
was  the  first  part  to  be  conquered,  the  region  round  the  Tweed, 
the  Tyne,  and  the  Tees  ;  the  other  was  Deira,  the  second  part  to 
be  conquered,  the  country  round  York. 

Needless  to  say,  the  cause  of  this  division  was  a  clan  feud, 
a  quarrel  such  as  those  that  broke  out  among  the  Germans  or 
between  the  sons  of  Clovis.  Division  followed  reunion  and  re- 
union division,  according  to  the  varying  success  of  the  domestic 
struggles  between  Ida's  descendants  and  of  the  assassinations  by 
which  the  hostile  parties  constantly  decimated  each  other's  ranks. 

Shortly  after  the  first  rupture,  one  of  the  chiefs  led  a  band 
of  emigrant  Angles  from  Northumbria  to  the  south,  and  settled 
between  the  Wash  and  the  kingdom  of  Essex.  This  new  settle- 
ment took  the  name  of  East  Anglia  (571).  Tt  consisted  of  the 
present  counties  of  Norfolk,  Suffolk,  and  Cambridge.  In  order 
to  get  some  idea  of  the  gap  which  there  was  between  the  Angles 
of  East  Anglia  and  those  of  Northumbria,  it  must  be  remembered 
that  all  the  coast  between  the  Humber  and  the  Wash — that  is  to 
say,  all  the  country  of  Lincoln,  except  for  its  far-inland  western 
hills — was  a  region  of  lagoons  as  Holland  was  originally,  an 
almost  uninhabitable  land,  with  nothing  but  water  and  mud- 
flats on  every  side.  It  is  extremely  probable  that  the  expedi- 
tion of  Angles  went  round  by  sea,  the  only  easy  and  open  route. 
East  Anglia,  which  was  cut  off  from  Northumbria  in  this 
way  by  the  watery  desert  of  Lincoln,  was  the  very  place  for 
a  party  of  secessionists.  Moreover,  it  was  well  shut  in  by  the 
Wash,  by  the  rivers  which  flow  into  it  after  winding  through 
great  marshes,  by  the  territory  of  the  sedentary  Saxons  of 
Essex,  and  by  the  North  Sea. 

But  the  Angles  did  not  proceed  with  their  conquests  in  the 
same  way  as  the  Saxons.  They  did  not,  like  the  Saxons, 
take  possession  of  a  piece  of  land  which  they  filled  compactly 
and  worked  methodically  in  such  a  way  that  they  avoided 
much  fighting  and  always  had  a  precisely  defined  and  well-filled 
territory.  On  the  contrary,  like  all  the  Old  Germans  who 
came  straight  from  the  basin  of  the  Baltic,  they  tried  to  spread 
over  as  large  an  area  as  possible,  and,  by  dispersing  abroad,  to 
invade  the  whole  country  regardless  of  limits.  So,  not  content 
with  Northumbria  and  East  Anglia,  they  speedily  overflowed 
those  two  countries  and  spread  over  the  intermediate  inland 


OVER  THE  ANGLES  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN    243 

territory,  which  was  completely  cut  off  from  the  sea  by  the 
long,  deep  lagoons  of  Lincoln  of  which  we  have  just  spoken. 
The  position  of  the  land,  which  stretched  into  the  interior 
behind  the  marshy  border,  gave  rise  to  the  name  of  marchc, 
merk — that  is  to  say,  the  border  of  the  marsh.  So  the  new 
kingdom  occupying  that  territory  was  called  the  kingdom  of 
Mercia  (585).  It  was  shut  in  between  the  Humber  and  its 
tributary  the  Don,  the  coast  of  Lincoln,  the  Wash,  the  hills 
on  the  north  of  the  Thames,  then  covered  with  forests,  and 
the  Welsh  mountains.  Thus  it  bordered  on  Northumbria,  East 
Anglia,  Essex,  and  Wessex.  It  filled  up  the  space  between  them.1 

Its  founder,  Crida,  was  also  an  Odinid.  The  most  ancient 
traditions  declare  him  to  be  a  descendant  of  Odin  in  the  tenth 
degree.  I  shall  not  discuss  here  the  value  of  such  genealogies. 
I  need  only  say  that  they  are  an  interesting  piece  of  evidence 
of  the  existence  of  an  Odinid  type  which  all  these  personages 
represented  in  the  eyes  of  those  who  flourished  not  long  after. 
It  must  also  not  be  forgotten  that  it  was  the  principal  duty  of 
those  bards  who  were  their  contemporaries  or  had  preceded 
them  to  preserve  the  memory  of  all  the  illustrious  descendants, 
however  complicated  the  relationships  might  be. 

The  Angles  of  Northumbria,  who  still  remained  in  a  compact 
body,  were  numerous  and  strong  enough  to  absorb  a  part  of 
the  population  of  Britons  inhabiting  the  lowlands.  They 
had,  moreover,  diminished  the  native  population  to  a  remark- 
able extent  by  their  devastations.  So  great  was  their  delight 
in  burning  and  plundering  that  the  traditional  names  of  "  the 
Incendiary  "  and  "  the  Plunderer  "  have  been  handed  down 
as  the  appellations  of  Ida,  their  first  chief,  and  of  Ethelfrid, 
his  grandson.  But  in  East  Anglia  and  Mercia  especially  they 
were  not  numerous  enough  to  people  the  land,  and  the  local 
race  continued  to  dwell  in  their  midst  in  considerable  numbers, 
and  here  and  there  still  kept  apart  in  small  tribal  groups.  The 
Angles  of  Mercia  in  particular  made  them  their  allies,  and 
found  them  extremely  helpful  in  fighting  against  Northumbria 
and  East  Anglia. 

The  finest  expeditions  of  that  dreaded  league  were  led  by 
Penda  and  Cadwallon :  Penda  the  leader  of  the  Angles  of 
Mercia,  and  Cadwallon  the  leader  of  the  native  allies.  For 
1  See  Foncin's  Attas  Gentral,  p.  25. 


' 

or  THE  ^ 
UNIVFBSITV 


244  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  SAXONS 

thirty  years  they  were  the  scourge  of  the  neighbourhood.  But 
though  the  Saxons  on  the  Thames  sometimes  had  to  defend 
themselves  against  the  Mercians,  the  struggle  was  mainly  a 
fratricidal  struggle  of  Angles  against  Angles  (from  626  to  655). 

It  is  impossible  to  read  the  history  of  the  Angles  in  Great 
Britain  without  being  struck  by  the  fury  of  the  fights  in  which 
they  won  lasting  fame.  In  this  respect  there  can  be  no  com- 
parison between  them  and  the  Saxons  :  they  were  incompar- 
ably more  devoted  to  war. 

We  have  now  a  fair  idea  of  the  salient  features  of  the 
invasion  of  the  Angles,  which  was  very  different  from  that  of 
the  Saxons  and  very  similar  to  the  great  Germanic  invasions. 
It  can  be  best  compared  with  the  invasion  of  the  Lombards 
in  the  north  of  Italy.  The  Lombards  were  the  Angles'  nearest 
neighbours  on  the  southern  shores  of  the  Baltic.  Of  all  the 
Old  Germans,  these  two  peoples  were  the  most  sedentary  and 
the  most  civilised,  thanks  to  the  proximity  of  that  "  Scandi- 
navian archipelago  "  where  the  Goths  and  Odinids  had,  to  a 
remarkable  extent,  developed  agriculture,  the  useful  and 
decorative  arts,  and  the  maritime  commerce  of  the  basin  of 
the  Baltic,  and  had  fostered  an  ardent  love  of  war.  But  the 
Angles  appear  to  have  been  superior  even  to  the  Lombards. 
They  were,  after  all,  nearer  neighbours  of  the  Goths,  and,  as 
a  matter  of  fact,  were  actually  of  their  family.  They  had  more 
affinities  with  those  rich  peasants,  who  preserved  so  much 
independence  under  the  domination  of  the  Odinids,  and  who 
produced  those  isolated  emigrants,  the  founders  of  the  Nor- 
wegian and  Saxon  types. 

The  same  distinction  as  that  to  which  we  referred  in  speaking 
of  the  Jutes,  but  which  does  not  occur  among  the  pure  Saxons, 
we  also  find  among  the  Angles  :  namely,  the  distinction  between 
Jarls  and  Karls,  between  nobles  and  peasants.  In  the  Saxon 
kingdoms  in  Great  Britain  we  have  met  with  no  distinction 
of  class  and  birth,  with  the  single  exception  of  the  Odinid  chief  ; 
there  were  people  called  Witans,  Thegns,  or  Ealdormen,  by 
reason  of  the  public  confidence  they  enjoyed  or  of  the  different 
amounts  of  property  they  possessed,  but  their  superiority 
was  not  based  on  anything  else,  and  they  were  certainly  all 
equals.  Furthermore,  among  the  Jutes  a  number  of  persons 
were  distinguished  by  the  name  of  Ethel  or  Etheling  (Edel  in 


OVER  THE  ANGLES  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN    245 

German),  which  does  not  occur  among  the  Saxons,  not  even 
among  their  kings,  until  the  period  of  their  fusion  with  the 
Angles.  The  first  Saxon  king  who  took  the  title  of  Ethel 
was,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  Ethelwolf,  the  son  and  successor  of  the 
Egbert  by  whom  the  Heptarchy — that  is  to  say,  the  seven 
kingdoms  of  Kent,  Sussex,  Wessex,  Essex,  Northumbria,  East 
Anglia,  and  Mercia — were  united  to  form  the  kingdom  of 
England  at  the  beginning  of  the  ninth  century. 

Another  feature  by  which  we  recognise  the  relationship  of 
the  Angles  with  the  Old  Germans  is  the  great  suite  of  faithful 
followers  which  accompanied  persons  of  distinction.  This 
domesticity,  as  it  were,  of  persons  of  high  rank  existed  only  to 
a  very  small  extent,  and  was  but  little  apparent  among  the 
Saxon  kings,  the  Ealdormen,  and  the  Thegns.  On  the  contrary, 
it  was  very  frequent  and  very  marked  among  the  Angles.  A 
very  good  idea  of  it  can  be  obtained  by  reading  the  Historia 
Ecdesiastica  Gentis  Anglorum  of  Bede,  if  only  the  reader  dis- 
tinguishes carefully  when  the  writer  is  speaking  of  Saxon 
countries  and  when  of  the  lands  of  the  Angles  :  for  he  often 
confounds  the  two  races  under  the  general  appellation  of 
"  Angles  and  Saxons,"  and  even  under  either  of  those  names 
without  the  other,  because  in  his  time  (673  to  735)  a  sort  of 
fusion  had  already  taken  place,  due  not  only  to  the  increased 
intercourse  between  the  two  peoples,  but  to  the  beginning  of  a 
political  union:  Ina,  King  of  Wessex,  had  made  the  superiority  of 
his  Saxons  felt  throughout  the  south  and  also  in  Mercia  (725), 
and,  seventy-five  years  afterwards,  Egbert,  one  of  his  successors, 
attempted  to  unite  the  whole  Heptarchy  in  a  single  kingdom. 

These  "  faithful  followers,"  who  were  no  more  no  less  than 
members  of  a  truste,  were  often  admitted  to  the  table  of 
the  man  they  served,  and,  in  the  Latin  language  used  by  Bede, 
bear  the  thoroughly  Teutonic  title  of  "  companions  "  (comites), 
the  special  meaning  of  which  can  be  easily  distinguished  by 
the  context  from  the  other  applications  of  the  same  term, 
which  are,  by  the  way,  very  numerous. 

Bede's  Anglo-Saxon  translator  renders  the  word  by  Gesith, 
which  is  the  proper  word  in  the  Teutonic  tongue  to  denote  the 
"  faithful  followers."  The  Franks  formed  their  name  vassal 
from  this  word.  Bede  calls  the  faithful  followers  of  a  lower 
order  milites  (knights) ;  and  there  again  it  is  necessary  to  dis- 


246  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  SAXONS 

tinguish,  by  help  of  the  context,  the  cases  where  this  appellation 
has  a  special  meaning,  and  where  it  is  extended  to  military 
functions  of  different  kinds.  Moreover,  whatever  may  be  the 
terms,  this  fact  is  evident  from  the  details  of  the  story  :  that 
personages  of  importance  among  the  Angles  had  a  suite  of 
"  faithful  followers,"  who  held  a  position  of  far  greater  import- 
ance than  those  composing  the  very  simple  household  of  even 
the  King  of  the  Saxons. 

Furthermore,  the  Angles  are  differentiated  from  the  Saxons 
and  are  marked  as  Old  Germans  by  the  immense  size  of  their 
domains.  They  seem  to  have  taken  possession  of  the  land  as 
if  it  were  a  store  of  property  to  be  distributed,  and  not  a  pro- 
ductive force  to  be  turned  to  account.  They  were  still  bent 
upon  the  mere  possession  of  the  land,  quite  apart  from  the 
labour  to  be  expended  on  it.  We  remarked  this  before,  when 
we  described  them  as  hastening  to  spread,  without  any  reason, 
over  an  indefinite  area  of  Great  Britain.  Moreover,  these  large 
properties  corresponded  to  the  lofty  positions  ascribed  by 
tradition  to  their  class  of  nobles  with  their  suites  of  faithful 
followers. 

The  natural  inconveniences  and  the  inevitable  consequences 
attendant  upon  this  peculiar  system  of  holding  property  are 
very  manifest  in  the  history  of  the  Angles.  Whilst  donations 
of  property  were  very  rare  and  very  small  among  the  Saxons, 
they  were  innumerable  and  very  large  among  the  Angles  : 
donations  were  continually  made,  and  were  of  unlimited  size. 
We  know  this  from  the  fact  of  the  resistance  made  by  the 
Church  itself,  which,  after  the  final  conversion  of  the  Angles, 
became  the  recipient  of  a  great  portion  of  these  immoderate 
gifts,  and  was  the  first  to  recognise  their  abuses  and  dangers. 

The  Church  does  not  profess  to  have  any  definite  system  of 
dealing  with  property :  wherever  her  influence  extends,  she 
submits  to  the  different  systems  of  social  organisation  she 
happens  to  come  across ;  she  necessarily  perceives  their  incon- 
veniences or  their  advantages  according  to  their  nature  and 
intrinsic  value.  Or,  if  privileges  are  granted  to  her,  they  are 
not  seldom  granted  with  an  insufficient  knowledge  of  the  con- 
ditions which  regulate  the  society  of  the  neighbourhood,  and 
in  such  cases  they  do  not  in  the  end  turn  to  her  good  or  to  that 
of  secular  society. 


OVER  THE  ANGLES  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN    247 

That  is  what  happened  with  the  Angles.  Allured  by  the 
exemptions  from  taxes  and  by  other  advantages  which  had 
become  the  privilege  of  the  monastic  order,  many  of  the  nobles 
had,  upon  request,  obtained  immense  grants  of  land  from  the 
kings  and  the  national  assemblies  under  the  pretext  of  founding 
monasteries  upon  them.  "  Sometimes  the  monasteries  were 
really  founded,  but  they  had  nothing  monastic  or  even  Christian 
about  them.  The  recipients  of  gifts  of  land  gathered  about 
them  a  handful  of  their  vassals  (that  is  to  say,  of  their  faithful 
followers)  or  of  secularised  monks  who  had  been  expelled  from 
regular  monasteries  ;  they  called  themselves  abbots,  and  they 
all  lived  with  their  wives  and  children  on  territory  which  had 
been  extorted  from  the  nation,  with  no  other  concern  than  to 
provide  for  their  households  and  their  material  interests. 
Sometimes  the  recipient  of  the  grant  of  land  used  it  for  his 
profit,  and  never  gave  a  thought  to  the  pretext  he  had  alleged 
in  order  to  get  it ;  he  founded  no  monastery,  not  even  a  sham 
one  such  as  I  have  just  described.  For  this  reason  the  Vener- 
able Bede  did  not  scruple  to  call  upon  the  kings  and  bishops  to 
repeal,  with  the  sanction  of  the  national  assemblies,  every  one 
of  those  fraudulent  and  scandalous  grants."  l 

It  must  be  observed  that  this  method  of  exploiting  the 
country  against  which  Bede  protested  was  anything  but  Saxon. 
All  that  we  have  just  said  refers  expressly  to  Northumbria, 
the  main  settlement  of  the  Angles.  This  peculiarity  could 
not  entirely  escape  the  notice  of  historians.  Montalembert 
remarked  it.  He  writes  :  "  Donationes  stultissimce,  says  Bede, 
in  speaking  of  the  gifts  of  the  kings  of  Northumbria."  2 

But  it  was  not  Northumbria  alone  which  was  in  this  evil 
plight.  Similar  facts  concerning  Mercia  are  brought  to  light  a 
little  later  at  the  second  Council  of  Cloveshoe,  a  partly  religious, 
partly  secular  assembly  (747),  the  most  important  that  took 
place  during  the  eighth  century  in  Great  Britain,  and  presided 
over  by  the  King  of  Mercia  in  person.  "  The  Council  enjoins 
the  bishops  to  visit  the  monasteries — if  such  they  can  be  called 
—which,  in  contempt  of  the  Christian  religion,  avarice  and 
tyranny  keep  in  the  hands  of  laymen  who  have  acquired  pos- 
session of  them,  not  by  an  act  of  divine  ordination,  but  by 

1  Montalembert,  Les  Moines  d' Occident,  bk.  xvi.  chap,  i.,  or  vol.  v.  p.  205. 

2  Ibid,  p.  200. 


248  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  SAXONS 

a  trick  dictated  by  human  presumption.1     But  there  are  no 
indications   that    vigorous    measures   were    adopted    for    the 
suppression   of   the   disgraceful   abuses  which   had   produced 
these  mock-monasteries.     Improper  concessions  of  public  land 
continued  to  be  made  either  to  false  monks,  or,  what  was  far 
more  frequent,  to  powerful  laymen,  till  the  end  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  period,  and  produced  serious  disturbances  in  the  develop- 
ment of   the   population   and  in   the   condition  of  freemen, 
which    favoured    Danish    and    Gorman    invasions.     But    the 
Council  of  Cloveshoe  had  to  repress  other  abuses  besides  secular 
usurpation.  .  .  .  The  twelve  bishops ,  after  debating  with  the 
King  of  Mercia  and  his  nobles,  forbade  monks,  and  especially 
nuns,  to  make  any  change  in  their  clothing,  in  what  they  wore 
either  on  their  feet  or  on  their  heads,  which  would  tend  to 
make  their  costume  more  like  that  of  lay-people.2     The  Council 
also  forbade  them  to  frequent  the  houses  of  laymen,  and,  above 
all,  to  reside  in  them  ;  3  it  enjoined  the  abbots  and  abbesses 
to  spare  no  efforts  to  keep  alive  in  their  communities  and  in 
the  schools  belonging  to  them  the  love  of  study  and  of  reading, 
as  being  the  best  preservative  against  the  vanities  and  lusts 
of  the  world,4  and  to  make  their  monasteries  the  abode  of 
silence,   study,   prayer,   and  labour.      It    censured  and  pro- 
scribed   the    presence    of    poets,    minstrels,    musicians,    and 
jesters  in  religious  houses  ;  likewise  the  prolonged  visits  of 
laymen,  who  used  to  be  allowed  to  enter  the  monasteries  and 
wander  about  in  the  cloisters  ;  likewise  the  sumptuous  and  pro- 
longed feasts  mingled  with  coarse  jesting  ; 5  and  last,  but  not 
least,  that  fatal  tendency  to  drunkenness  which  not  only  made 
the  monks  drink  to  excess  themselves,  but  force  their  lay  guests 
to  drink  with  them."  6 

"  But  among  the  abuses  which  that  watchful  and  paternal 
authority  wished  to  repress,  there  was  not  one  which  was  not 
originally  due  to  the  laxity  which  the  sudden  access  of  a  super- 
abundance of  wealth  had  introduced  into  the  monasteries. 
For  that  wealth  brought  other  dangers  as  well  as  the  laxity 
within  the  monasteries.  It  kindled  the  fire  of  covetousness 
on  all  sides.  Sometimes  the  real  heirs  of  a  lawful  abbot  of  a 

1  Cap.  6.  2  Cap.  28.  3  Cap.  29. 

4  Cap.  7.  5  Cap.  20. 

6  Cap.  21.     Montalembert,  vol.  v.  206-209. 


OVER  THE  ANGLES  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN     249 

regular  monastery  came  after  his  death  and  forcibly  took 
possession  of  the  monastic  estates  under  the  pretext  that  the 
abbey  had  been  the  property  of  the  deceased  man  and  that 
they  had  an  acquired  right  over  it  with  the  sole  obligation  of 
supporting  the  monks.  Or  again,  the  kings  and  princes  came 
and  established  themselves  in  a  large  monastery,  as  if  it  were 
a  place  of  rest  and  pleasure,  with  all  their  equipage,  their  train 
of  officials,  of  huntsmen,  squires,  and  footmen,  who  had  to 
be  lodged,  and  fed,  and  conveyed  from  place  to  place,  as  well 
as  the  dogs  and  the  falcons.  The  fact  that  there  were  privi- 
leges exempting  certain  monasteries  from  the  duty  of  receiving 
such  visits  proves  what  an  habitual  and  onerous  duty  it  must 
have  been.  Other  kings,  again,  who  were  far  more  exacting 
and  more  feared,  revoked  the  grants  made  by  their  predecessors, 
and  claimed  the  lands  that  had  been  so  given.  Their  claims 
and  those  of  the  monks  had  to  be  debated  before  the  Witen- 
agemot,  whose  decisions  could  not  always  be  in  accordance 
with  the  rights  of  the  weaker  party.  The  nobles  and  men 
of  importance  were  only  too  ready  to  follow  the  king's  example. 
They  claimed  the  lands  that  had  been  granted  by  their  ancestors, 
or  seized  those  that  lay  near.  Proofs  of  their  depredations  still 
exist  in  the  numerous  charters  which  enjoined  more  or  less 
complete  restitution  of  the  property  within  a  longer  or  shorter 
time,  but  which  show  at  the  same  time  that  violence  and  ra- 
pacity only  too  often  took  the  place  of  the  pious  munificence 
of  the  past."  * 

All  this  is  evidence  of  a  society  in  decay. 

It  was  the  beginning  of  the  eighth  century.  "  The  star 
of  Northumbria,"  says  Montalembert,  "  had  already  paled, 
never  to  glow  again."  2  The  same  can  be  said  of  Mercia.  As 
for  East  Anglia,  it  was  too  insignificant  to  attract  the  special 
attention  of  historians.  Northumbria,  as  we  saw,  was  the 
kingdom  of  the  Angles  par  excellence.  "  So  far,"  says  Lingard, 
on  reaching  a  slightly  earlier  epoch  in  his  Histoire  d'Angleterre, 
"  a  great  deal  of  space  has  been  needed  to  describe  the  deeds 
and  attainments  of  the  Northumbrian  princes ;  a  few  pages 
will  suffice  for  the  history  of  their  successors,  which  the  reader 
will  find  to  be  nothing  but  a  continuous  series  of  acts  of  treason, 
perfidy,  and  murder."  And  a  little  farther  on  :  "  It  is  un- 

1  Montalembert,  vol.  v.  pp.  212-214.  2  Ibid.  p.  108. 


250  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  SAXONS 

necessary  to  follow  the  history  of  these  princes  further  :  during 
the  previous  century  Northumbria  had  been  the  scene  of  a 
succession  of  betrayals  and  murders  which  could  scarcely  be 
paralleled  in  the  history  of  any  other  country."  l 

And  it  was  only  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  since  the  Angles 
had  invaded  Great  Britain. 

It  is  easy  to  prophesy,  from  what  we  have  already  observed, 
which  race  will  soon  have  the  ascendency  in  Great  Britain — 
that  of  the  Saxons  or  of  the  Angles.  We  now  find  no  difficulty 
in  understanding  how  it  came  about  that  the  small  Saxon 
race  which  had  settled  in  the  south  of  Great  Britain  rapidly 
absorbed  the  brilliant  race  of  Angles,  who  were  very  numerous 
and  were  the  most  civilised  of  the  Germanic  races  next  to  the 
Goths,  and  masters  of  a  fine  stretch  of  country  reaching  from 
the  centre  to  the  north,  the  richest  lands  in  Great  Britain. 

But  how  did  the  Saxons  gain  their  ascendency  ? 

They  acted  in  exactly  the  same  way  towards  the  Angles 
in  Great  Britain  as  the  English  in  modern  times  acted  towards 
the  French  with  whom  at  the  start  they  came  into  contact 
in  America. 

Anyone  who  compares  a  map  of  England  in  the  sixth  century 
with  a  map  of  North  America  in  the  eighteenth — that  is  to 
say,  before  1713 — cannot  help  being  struck  by  the  extraordinary 
resemblance  of  the  situations.2 

Just  in  the  same  way  as  the  Saxons,  after  the  settlement 
of  the  Angles,  were  congregated  between  the  Channel  and  the 
hills  which  rise  to  the  north  of  the  Thames,  while  the  Angles 
filled,  or  seemed  to  fill,  all  the  rest,  as  far  as  the  undetermined 
and  distant  boundaries  beyond  which  dwelt  what  was  left 
of  the  native  population,  so  the  English  before  1713  occupied 
only  the  strip  of  territory  between  the  Atlantic  and  the  Alleghany . 
Mountains  from  New  Hampshire  to  Georgia  and  Florida,  while 
the  French  extended  their  possessions  behind  the  Alleghany 
Mountains  to  the  north,  to  the  west,  to  the  south  indefinitely 
in  the  enormous  regions  which  now  form  Canada  and  the  United 
States  :  Hudson  Bay,  the  basin  of  the  St.  Lawrence,  the  Great 
Lakes,  the  huge  valley  of  the  Mississippi,  all  belonged  to  them. 

1  Hist.  d'AngL,  i.  chap.  iii.  pp.  84,  87. 

2  See,  among  others,  Foncin's  Atlas  General,  map  25,  and  map  42,  the  figure 
on  the  right  hand,  at  the  top. 


OVER  THE  ANGLES  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN    251 

The  names  of  Maine,  Quebec,  St.  Louis,  Louisiana,  and  many 
others  still  bear  witness  to  it. 

Well,  a  century  had  not  elapsed  before  that  English  race 
which  had  settled  on  the  shores  of  the  Atlantic  had  absorbed 
everything,  assimilated  everything,  reduced  everything  to  its 
own  type. 

How  had  it  been  able  to  accomplish  that  change  ?  By 
colonising  the  land  better  than  the  other  inhabitants  ;  by 
placing  the  government,  which  was  based  on  freedom  and 
equity,  in  the  hands  of  "  the  gentry,"  as  we  have  already  seen 
done  by  the  Saxons  ;  by  ensuring  in  that  way  their  own  safety 
and  development,  while  the  others  became  rapidly  disorganised  ; 
by  being,  in  consequence,  more  capable  of  maintaining  an  armed 
resistance  in  the  case  of  war  ;  by  arousing,  as  another  immediate 
consequence,  the  positive  and  practical  sympathies  of  the  very 
people  they  were  attempting  to  bring  into  union  with  them- 
selves ;  by  leaving  them,  after  victory,  free  to  govern  themselves 
subject  to  a  very  strict  political  union  ;  by  gradually  spreading 
so  as  to  occupy  the  empty  lands,  by  taking  the  lead  for  which 
their  capacity  fitted  them,  and  by  thus  making  them  in  the 
end  adopt  their  own  methods — that  is  to  say,  the  best. 

If  we  examine  this  process  point  by  point — and  it  is  easy 
to  follow  every  step  of  it — if  we  watch  the  absolutely  natural 
and  steady  working  of  the  movement,  which  is  almost  as  regular 
as  that  of  a  piece  of  self-acting  mechanism,  we  shall  see  that 
it  is  all  an  exact  and  literal  reproduction  of  the  development 
of  the  Saxons  in  Great  Britain  as  compared  with  that  of  the 
Angles. 

All  we  have  to  do  is  to  take  up  our  history  and  read  it.  Let 
us  go  over  each  point. 

Our  first  points  are  already  established  : 

1.  I  said,  "By  colonising  the  land  better  than  the  other 
inhabitants."  This  we  have  just  noticed.  We  noticed  it,  in 
fact,  when  we  compared  the  two  different  ways  of  taking 
possession  of  the  land  :  on  the  one  hand,  we  saw  the  Saxons 
settling  in  small,  compact  colonies  ;  on  the  other,  the  Angles 
invading  immense  areas  and  being  constantly  involved  in 
fighting.  We  saw  it  again  in  the  disorders  relating  to  property 
which  broke  out  in  Northumbria  and  Mercia.  They  reached 
such  a  pitch  that  Bede,  who  wrote  about  them,  was  driven  to 


252  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  SAXONS 

fear  that  the  ruin  of  Northumbria  was  imminent.  After 
earnestly  entreating  that  the  concessions  stigmatised  in  his  book 
as  stultissimce,  which  were  granted  to  laymen  who  made  a  mere 
pretence  of  religion,  should  be  withdrawn,  he  adds,  "  You 
know  better  than  I  do  that  there  are  so  many  estates  occupied 
by  false  monks,  that  nothing  remains  to  be  given  to  the  sons 
of  the  nobles  and  of  ancient  warriors,  so  that  they  are  obliged 
to  cross  the  sea,  abandoning  the  fatherland  they  might  have 
defended  to  waste  their  manhood  in  debauchery  and  idleness 
for  lack  of  any  suitable  place  for  settlement.  .  .  .  The  future 
will  show  if  any  good  will  result  from  it !  "  x 

2.  I  said,  "  By  placing  the  government,  based  on  freedom 
and  equity,  in  the  hands  of  the  gentry,  as  we  have  already  seen 
done  by  the  Saxons."     Among  the  Angles,  on  the  contrary, 
we  read,  on  the  one  hand,  of  the  behaviour  of  the  large  class 
of  hereditary  nobles,  who  used  the  most  deplorable  means  to 
procure  themselves  property.     And  we  might  add  the  spectacle 
presented  by  the  King  of  Mercia  (796),  distributing  a  pound  of 
silver  to  each  man  present  "  who  was  of  noble  birth,  but  was 
without  landed  possessions."  2     On  the  other  hand,  wherever 
the  book  opens,  we  read  of  nothing  but  interminable  and  in- 
cessant tribal  struggles  between  rival  chiefs,  acts  of  despotism, 
in  the  midst  of  which  first  Northumbria,  the  country  with  the 
purest  Angle  population,  and  then  Mercia,  foundered.     It  is 
enough  for  us  to  glance  at  Lingard's  concise  remarks,  which 
we  quoted  above.     At  this  time  the  Saxons  still  used  only  the 
three  distinctions  of  Witans,  Thegns,  and  Ealdormen  :  Ego  Ina 
(720),  Dei  Gratid,  West  Saxonum  rex,  exhortatione  Aldermanorum 
meorum,  Seniorum  (that  is,  the  Thegns)  et  Sapientium  (Witans) 
regni  mei  .  .  . :  that  is  the  way  in  which  they  testified  to  a 
solemn  public  declaration. 

3.  I  said,  "  By  ensuring  their  own  safety  and  development, 
by  colonising  the  land  in  this  way,  and  by  promoting  self- 
government,  whilst  the  others  became  rapidly  disorganised." 
This  follows  inevitably  from  the  preceding  step,  as  is  proved 
by  what  follows. 

4.  I  said,   "  By  being,  in  consequence,  more   capable   of 
maintaining   an   armed  resistance  in  case   of  war."     Mercia 
benefited  by  the  decadence  of  Northumbria,  and  seemed  to 

1  Hist.  v.  23.  2  Lingard,  i.  p.  97. 


OVER  THE  ANGLES  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN     253 

threaten  to  domineer  over  the  country.  "  In  the  south  the 
kings  of  Wessex  fought  impatiently  against  its  ascendency  .  .  . 
they  were  even  compelled  to  send  some  troops  to  its  support. 
But  at  the  end  of  the  year  752,  Cuthred,  King  of  Wessex, 
attempted  to  deliver  his  country,  and  held  his  own  boldly 
against  the  Mercians.  In  the  open  space  between  the  two 
armies,  Edilhun,  who  carried  the  golden  dragon,  the  banner 
of  Wessex,  slew  with  his  own  hand  the  standard-bearer  of 
Ethelbald,  King  of  Mercia.  At  last,  chance  brought  Ethelbald 
himself  face  to  face  with  Edilhun;  but  the  King  of  Mercia  recoiled 
before  the  gigantic  figure  and  bloody  sword  of  his  adversary, 
and  set  his  men  the  example  of  headlong  flight.  That  defeat 
destroyed  the  supremacy  of  Mercia  for  a  time."  l  There  we 
get  a  glimpse  of  the  energy  of  a  race  that  does  not  despair 
nor  fears  the  most  illustrious  adversaries.  Events,  after  that, 
began  to  take  another  turn.  Only  half  a  century  later,  the 
famous  Egbert,  whom  the  Witenagemot  had  previously  rejected 
for  another  candidate,  and  who  had  prudently  retired  to  the 
court  of  Charlemagne,  was  elected  King  of  Wessex.  He  spent 
nine  years  in  preparing  his  people  to  make  war,  and  then  he 
attacked  the  Mercians,  who  gave  way  after  a  single  battle,  in 
823,  at  Ellandun.  Their  efforts  to  rally  were  of  no  avail.  Egbert 
thus  found  himself  on  the  very  frontiers  of  Northumbria  :  "  The 
Northumbrian  chiefs,  with  Eanfrid  at  their  head,  came  out  to 
meet  him  at  Dore,  hailed  him  as  their  overlord,  and  gave  him 
hostages  as  a  guarantee  of  their  obedience."  2  This  brings  me 
to  the  fifth  link  in  the  sequence  we  are  following,  namely  : 

5.  I  said,  "  By  arousing,  as  another  immediate  consequence, 
the  positive  and  practical  sympathies  of  the  very  people  they 
were  trying  to  bring  into  union  with  themselves." 

6.  I  added,  "  By  leaving  them,  after  victory,  free  to  govern 
themselves,  but  insisting  on  a  very  strict  political  union."     We 
have  just  seen  that  though  he  would  have  been  able  to  con- 
quer the  Northumbrians,  Egbert  contented  himself  with  their 
adhesion  and  their  guarantees,  and  left  them  their  own  chiefs 
and  their  provincial  independence.     He  did  exactly  the  same  for 
Mercia  after  having  thoroughly  defeated  it.     "  Egbert  allowed 
Wiglaf,  the  king  elected  by  the  Mercians  in  the  midst  of  their 
defeat,  to  keep  his  sceptre  on  condition  that  he  paid  an  annual 

1  Lingard,  i.  p.  91.  2  Ibid.  i.  pp.  110,  111. 


254  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  SAXONS 

tribute,  and  took  an  oath  of  allegiance,  and  did  homage  to  the 
King  of  Wessex."  l 

In  this  way  the  Heptarchy  came  to  an  end,  but  was  reunited 
under  the  rule  of  the  Saxons.  It  was  the  founding  of  the 
first  United  States  of  England  by  the  Saxons.  The  leader  of 
this  unified  state  continued  to  bear  the  significant  title  of  King 
of  the  Saxons  of  the  West.  He  was  sovereign  of  all  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  country.2  There  can  be  no  doubt  about  the  triumph  of 
the  Saxons.  It  has  been  sufficiently  well  proved.  The  Angles 
had  been  absorbed. 

7.  Finally  I  said,  "  By  gradually  spreading  so  as  to  occupy 
the  empty  lands,  by  taking  the  lead  for  which  their  capacity 
fitted  them,  and  by  thus  making  them  in  the  end  adopt  their 
own  methods — that  is  to  say,  the  best !  "  We  shall  find  that 
with  time  this  was  accomplished.  In  the  end  we  shall  see 
that  England  was  completely  Saxonised  ;  we  shall  find  Saxon 
institutions  spread  all  over  the  country  and  enduring  through 
all  time.  It  was  only  a  question  of  time.  Given  these  two 
races  side  by  side,  with  the  difference  in  their  worth,  and  there 
is  only  one  issue  possible  ;  but  this  kind  of  operation,  in  which 
violence  has  no  part,  takes  time.  However,  we  have  already 
seen  how  the  small  Frankish  emigrations  assimilated  a  portion 
of  the  half -German,  half -Roman,  half -Gel  tic  population  in  the 
midst  of  which  they  settled  in  Gaul.  We  also  saw,  and  shall 
see  again,  how  the  Franks  of  Austrasia  assimilated  what  re- 
mained of  the  Old  Germans  in  Germany,  and  all  the  Slavs  and 
Wends  who  gradually  drifted  in.  It  was  a  smaller  task  for  the 
Saxons  to  assimilate  the  Angles,  and  consequently  the  assimila- 
tion was  more  rapid  and  more  complete.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
the  Angles  were  more  closely  related  than  all  the  other  tribes 
of  Old  Germans  to  the  Saxons.  In  Schleswig  they  were  very 
near  the  Saxon  plain.  It  is  probable  that  among  the  emigrants 
who  became  Saxons  on  the  shores  of  the  North  Sea  there  were 
some  who  had  come  from  the  country  of  Angeln,  from  Schleswig, 
from  the  homes  of  the  Angles.  Moreover,  the  Angles,  like  all 
the  Goths,  were  skilled  in  agriculture.  It  made  them  realise 
the  importance  of  the  estate.  They  had  still  to  shake  off  the 
last  patriarchal  traditions,  which  had  already  become  con- 
siderably weakened,  as  usually  happens  among  skilled  agri- 
1  Lingard,  i.  p.  111.  2  Ibid.  i.  p.  Ill,  note. 


OVER  THE  ANGLES  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN    255 

culturists.  Their  removal  into  England  brought  about  the 
final  disorganisation  of  their  society,  and  once  their  families 
became  unstable,  their  fate  was  inevitable.  The  Saxons  then 
brought  them  under  their  rule  and  easily  assimilated  the  excep- 
tionally fine  and  masterly  qualities  peculiar  to  that  race.  As 
for  the  type  which  exhibited  inferior  elements  incapable  of 
transformation,  it  gradually  disappeared  in  the  shock  of  ordinary 
competition  as  one  generation  succeeded  another. 

But.  unfortunately  for  the  race  of  Angles,  unfortunately 
also  for  the  Saxons,  this  beneficial  work  of  assimilation,  of 
Saxonisation,  was  almost  at  once  disturbed,  checked,  delayed 
in  its  results  by  a  new  event — the  Danish  invasion. 

A  new  drama  was  enacted  which  once  more  revealed  the 
superiority  of  the  social  organisation  of  the  Saxons  of  Great 
Britain. 

We  shall  be  present  at  that  great  drama  :  we  shall  watch 
the  heroes  of  our  history  growing  up,  and  our  knowledge  of 
social  facts  will  be  thereby  increased. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

THE  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  SAXONS  OVER  THE 
DANES  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN 

I   HAVE  already  said  that  the  general  condition  of  a  people 
is  reflected  in   the  means  of   transport   it   uses,  because 
those  means  are  obviously  the  result  of  its  private  resources  and 
of  the  ability  of  its  public  authorities. 

We  have  watched  the  development  of  the  Saxons  in  Great 
Britain  from  their  landing  on  the  shores  of  Kent  under  the 
leadership  of  Hengist  and  Horsa,  chieftains  of  the  Jutes,  to  the 
establishment  of  their  sway  over  the  whole  island,  with  the 
exception  of  the  mountains  of  the  west  and  the  north,  under 
the  leadership  of  Egbert,  King  of  Wessex  and  conqueror  of 
the  Angles  (449-827).  Now  that  we  have  a  knowledge  of  the 
social  system  they  founded,  we  shall  be  able  to  see  how  far  their 
system  of  transports  corresponds  to  it.  This  will  come  out 
very  clearly  if  we  simply  make  a  comparison  between  them 
and  the  Franks. 

The  emigrants  from  the  Saxon  plain  entered  Gaul  and  Great 
Britain  at  almost  the  same  time,  and  the  two  emigrations  also 
produced  their  Charlemagne  and  their  Egbert  the  Great  at 
almost  the  same  time.  But  Egbert's  army  went  on  foot ; 
Charlemagne's  on  horseback.  And  Egbert's  kingdom  was 
scarcely  an  eighth  of  the  size  of  Charlemagne's  empire.  The 
difference  in  their  means  of  transport  and  in  their  relative 
powers  of  expansion  exactly  corresponded  to  the  divergency 
which  the  Franks  and  the  Anglo-Saxons  showed  in  their  social 
organisations. 

With  the  Franks  the  Saxon  type  had  been  overridden ; 
with  the  Anglo-Saxons  it  had  developed  normally. 

The  type  had  been  overridden  among  the  Franks  because 

256 


THE  DANES  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN  257 

the  small  estates  had  been  obliged  to  bind  themselves  closely  to 
the  large  estates  :  the  result  was  an  aristocracy  that  ruled  with 
a  firm  hand.  Now,  wherever  an  elite  body  governs  the 
rest  with  a  firm  hand,  progress  is  very  rapid  :  the  men  of 
ability  direct  everything  without  resistance.  This  accounts 
for  the  magnificent  progress  the  Franks  made  and  for  their 
extraordinary  extension  of  territory.  The  great  landowners, 
who  had  taken  the  lead  in  war  as  in  everything  else,  had 
ended  by  reserving  it  for  themselves  and  their  vassals,  who 
were  also  rich  proprietors.  They  were  both  provided  with  all 
that  was  necessary  for  warfare  on  horseback.  Besides,  that 
means  of  transport  was  absolutely  essential  to  success  when 
it  was  a  question  of  distant  expeditions.  Thus  the  principal 
means  of  transport  of  the  Franks  was  the  direct  outcome  of 
their  social  constitution. 

With  the  Anglo-Saxons,  on  the  contrary,  the  Saxon  type 
had  developed  normally.  Once  the  Celts  had  been  put  to 
flight,  each  Saxon  emigrant  had  been  able  to  make  an  entirely 
independent  estate  for  himself,  and  had  maintained  himself  upon 
it.  It  was  really  only  the  continuation  of  the  state  of  things 
in  the  Saxon  plain,  with  this  difference,  however,  that  in  Great 
Britain  the  abundance  of  available  land  and  the  fertility  of  the 
soil  supplied  the  elite  with  the  means  of  growing  great.  But 
those  who  knew  how  to  use  it,  grew  great  solely  on  their  own 
estate,  not  on  the  estates  of  others;  they  extended  and  improved 
their  own  property,  but  acquired  no  rights  of  ruling  the  lands 
of  others.  Those  who  were  less  clever  were  absolute  masters 
of  their  own  estates  just  as  much  as  the  more  talented.  For 
this  reason  the  nation  as  a  whole  progressed  far  more  slowly 
than  that  of  the  Franks  ;  the  more  talented  had  infinitely  less 
advantage  over  the  others.  The  gentleman — that  is,  the  leading 
man  among  a  group  of  freemen — did  not  hold  sway  like  the 
suzerain,  who  was  lord  of  the  district  and  accepted  as  such 
by  oath.  The  people  followed  the  gentlemen  when  it  pleased 
it  to  do  so  ;  it  allowed  them  to  act  in  its  place,  and  profited 
by  their  ability  when  it  found  it  advantageous.  A  government 
managed  on  this  friendly  system  was  far  from  being  able  to 
conduct  affairs  in  the  same  way  as  the  recognised  authority  of 
feudalism. 

In  the  end,  as  we  saw,  it  was  those  whom  we  called  small 

17 


258  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  SAXONS 

landowners,  those  who  owned  just  enough  land  to  enable  them 
by  their  labour  to  live  an  independent  life,  it  was  they  who 
remained  the  masters  and  had  the  last  word.  It  lay  with  them 
chiefly  to  decide  the  question  of  war.  by  rising  of  their  free 
will  at  the  call  of  the  herald  of  war,  or  by  staying  peacefully  at 
home.  As  matters  stood,  they  scarcely  ever  had  a  chance  of 
becoming  knights,  and  the  horse  was  a  kind  of  luxury  in  their 
eyes  :  they  generally  used  oxen  for  ploughing.  So  if  they  went 
out  to  battle,  they  went  on  foot.  Their  principal  weapon, 
which  was  an  object  of  dread  when  wielded  by  them,  was  the 
labourer's  axe,  with  which  they  themselves  used  to  clear  the 
land. 

It  would  be  impossible  to  find  a  better  illustration  than 
the  comparison  of  the  Franks  with  the  Saxons  of  Great  Britain 
of  the  fact  that  different  systems  of  transport  and  unequal 
powers  of  expansion  are  the  direct  results  of  divergent  social 
organisations. 

The  difference  becomes  all  the  more  palpable  if  we  embrace 
in  one  glance  as  it  were  the  feudal  nobleman  on  the  one  hand, 
mounted  on  his  horse  and  covered  by  a  suit  of  steel  armour, 
representing  in  his  own  person  a  whole  fighting  regiment,  and 
on  the  other,  the  Saxon  peasant,  on  foot,  armed  with  an  axe, 
and  fighting  in  the  serried  ranks  of  his  comrades  under  cover 
of  a  palisade  or  earth  entrenchment.  The  contrast  is  brought 
out  in  a  peculiarly  striking,  dramatic,  and,  I  was  going  to  say, 
picturesque  manner  in  the  first  trial  of  arms  between  Norman 
feudalism  and  Anglo-Saxon  peasantry  on  the  field  of  Hastings. 
Although  we  have  not  come  to  that  point  in  our  history— 
which,  after  all,  is  not  so  very  far  off — I  will  quote  a  short 
account  of  it  because  it  is  a  vivid  illustration  of  what  I  have 
just  said.  "  The  (feudal)  army  was  in  sight  of  the  Saxon  camp 
to  the  north-west  of  Hastings.  A  Norman  called  Taillefer 
pressed  his  horse  forward  in  front  of  the  line  of  battle  and 
sang  the  song  of  Charlemagne  and  Roland,  then  famous  through- 
out Gaul.  While  he  sang  he  played  with  his  sword,  throwing 
it  high  into  the  air  and  catching  it  again  in  his  right  hand. 
The  Normans  echoed  the  refrain.  The  Anglo-Saxons,  who 
were  all  on  foot  and  formed  a  solid  and  compact  body  behind 
their  palisades  about  the  standard,  which  was  planted  in  the 
ground,  received  their  assailants  with  mighty  blows  from 


OVER  THE  DANES  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN     259 

their  axes,  which,  with  a  single  back-stroke,  splintered  their 
lances  and  cut  through  their  mail  armour.  The  Normans 
found  that  they  could  not  make  their  way  into  the  redoubts  nor 
tear  up  the  stakes,  and,  worn  out  by  their  fruitless  attack, 
withdrew  towards  the  division  commanded  by  William.  The 
duke  then  commanded  his  archers  to  advance  and  shoot  their 
arrows  into  the  air,  so  that  they  might  fall  on  the  other  side  of 
the  rampart  in  front  of  the  enemy's  camp.  Several  of  the 
English  were  wounded — most  of  them  in  the  face — as  the  result 
of  this  manosuvre.  Harold  himself  was  pierced  through  the 
eye,  but  none  the  less  he  continued  to  fight  and  give  commands. 
But  the  Normans  were  driven  back  from  one  of  the  entrances 
to  the  camp  till  they  came  to  a  great  ravine  covered  with  brush- 
wood and  grass,  where  their  horses  stumbled  and  rolled  them 
over  in  confusion,  so  that  they  perished  in  great  numbers.  For 
a  moment  the  army  from  the  other  side  of  the  water  was  seized 
with  panic.  Rumour  whispered  that  the  duke  was  killed, 
and  flight  began.  William  threw  himself  before  the  fugitives 
and  barred  their  way,  threatening  them  and  striking  them 
with  his  lance.  The  knights  returned  to  the  redoubts,  but  met 
with  no  better  success  in  forcing  the  gates  or  making  a  breach. 
Then  the  duke  conceived  a  stratagem  by  which  to  make  the 
English  leave  their  position  and  break  ranks.  He  commanded 
a  thousand  knights  to  advance,  and  then  take  flight  at  once. 
At  sight  of  this  feigned  rout,  the  Saxons  lost  their  sang- 
froid (or  rather,  were  deceived) ;  they  all  joined  in  the  pursuit 
with  their  axes  slung  round  their  necks.  At  a  certain  distance, 
a  body  of  men,  posted  there  for  the  purpose,  joined  the  fugitives, 
who  turned  back  ;  and  the  English,  who  were  taken  by  surprise 
in  the  disorder  of  their  pursuit,  were  attacked  on  all  sides  by 
lance-thrusts  and  sword-blows,  which  they  were  unable  to  ward 
off  as  both  their  hands  were  employed  in  wielding  their  great 
axes.  Once  their  ranks  were  broken,  the  barriers  of  the  redoubts 
were  broken  through  ;  knights  and  foot-soldiers  made  their 
way  in  ;  but  the  fight  still  raged  fiercely,  hand  to  hand,  in  dire 
confusion.  William  had  his  horse  killed  under  him  ;  the  King 
Harold  and  his  two  brothers  fell  dead  at  the  foot  of  their 
standard.  Without  their  leader,  their  standard  gone,  all 
that  remained  of  the  English  army  prolonged  the  struggle 
till  night  fell,  and  the  combatants  of  both  sides  could 


260  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  SAXONS 

no  longer  recognise  friend  from  foe  except  by  their 
language."  l 

This  same  Harold,  King  of  England,  who  fell  at  the  battle 
of  Hastings,  had  had  to  repair  the  error  and  make  good  the 
defeat  of  a  certain  man  named  Kaoul,  who  had  come  from 
among  the  Franks  and  had  been  charged  with  the  defence  of 
the  country  near  the  Welsh  frontier.  This  man  had  conceived 
the  idea  "  of  summoning  the  Saxons  to  arms  in  order  to 
exercise  them  against  their  will  in  continental  tactics,  and 
tried  to  make  them  fight  on  horseback,  which  was  quite 
contrary  to  the  customs  of  their  race :  Anglos  contra  morem 
in  equis  pugnare  jussit."  2 

These  facts  are  beyond  doubt  and  command  belief.  More- 
over, it  is  needless  to  add  that  the  system  of  all-sufficient 
estates,  supplying  all  the  wants  of  their  inhabitants,  restricted 
the  ordinary  means  of  transport  among  the  Anglo-Saxons  even 
more  than  among  the  Franks,  since  in  England  the  estates 
were  not  attached  to  each  other  as  in  the  feudal  system,  and 
remained  wholly  independent.  It  is  needless  to  insist  further 
on  this  point. 

There  is  one  more  remark  to  be  added  on  the  question  of 
transports,  which  become  of  great  interest  when  we  see  their 
connection  with  the  constitution  of  societies. 

The  means  of  transport,  both  public  and  private,  civil  and 
military,  of  which  we  have  just  spoken,  were  the  means  of 
transport  ordinarily  used  by  the  Saxons  in  Great  Britain  ; 
but  the  Saxons  had  used  a  means  specially  suited  to  the  occa- 
sion in  order  to  reach  England  :  namely,  navigation.  What 
influence  had  it  had  upon  them  ? 

Almost  none,  except  that  it  cut  them  off  from  the  Continent ; 
and  that  implies  that  they  did  not  habitually  make  use  of 
navigation.  This  is  a  point  that  should  not  be  overlooked, 
for  we  are  only  too  ready  to  imagine,  though  quite  wrongly, 
that  because  the  Saxons  emigrated  to  an  island,  and 
because  they  were  the  prototypes  of  the  English  of  to-day, 
who  are  masters  of  the  sea,  that  they  must  have  been 
navigators. 

The  Saxon  was  essentially  a  peasant,  not  a  sailor.     The 

1  Aug.  Thierry,  La  Conqutte  de  FAngleterre,  vol.  i.  bk.  iii.  pp.  232-233. 

2  Ibid.  pp.  184-185. 


OVER  THE  DANES  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN      261 

same  thing  was  true  of  the  Norwegian.1  I  represented  him 
as  spurning  his  fishing-boat  as  soon  as  he  set  eyes  on  the  Saxon 
plain.  He  never  took  to  his  boat  again  except  on  rare  occa- 
sions, when  he  wished  to  remove  to  a  distant  land  and  stay 
there.  He  thereby  resembled  the  Pelasgian  :  he  colonised  by 
sea,  but  his  colonies  were  agricultural.  We  have  a  clear  enough 
idea  of  the  difference  between  the  Jute  and  the  Saxon — the  one 
a  sailor,  the  other  a  peasant — to  avoid  falling  into  the  error 
of  imagining  that  the  Saxons  were  navigators.  And  so  little 
were  they  inclined  to  a  seafaring  life  that  we  see  later  on  that 
they  were  obliged  to  resort  to  political  measures  in  order  to 
create  a  naval  force,  almost  in  the  same  way  as  the  Komans 
were  obliged  to  create  a  fleet  with  which  to  fight  the  Cartha- 
ginians. 

But  that  rare  use  of  navigation  which  brought  the  Saxons 
to  Great  Britain  from  the  Continent  had  the  effect  of  protecting 
them  for  six  centuries  from  the  feudal  system,  which  gradually 
spread  over  the  Continent,  where  the  rough  conflict  between 
Saxon  liberty  and  Romano-barbarian  government  made  its 
existence  necessary.  So  that  before  the  Saxons  of  Great 
Britain  came  into  contact  with  the  feudal  system,  they  had 
had  time  to  develop  under  their  normal  conditions,  and  were 
able  to  resist  the  terrible  shock  which  we  shall  presently 
describe. 

The  explanation  we  have  just  given  of  the  means  of  trans- 
port used  in  the  social  system  of  the  Anglo-Saxons  was  all 
the  more  necessary  because  we  are  about  to  see  the  Saxons  of 
Great  Britain  engaged  in  a  fierce  struggle  with  a  people  whose 
existence  depended  upon  the  habitual  use  of  that  very  means 
of  transport  which  was  only  accidental  and  exceptional  among 
the  Saxons  :  namely,  navigation. 

It  is  of  the  Danes  that  I  am  speaking. 

Scarcely  had  Egbert  the  Great  bound  together  Angles  and 
Saxons  and  united  the  Heptarchy  under  the  domination  of 
Wessex,  when  the  Danes  threatened  Great  Britain  with  a 
fresh  invasion. 

In  accordance  with  the  most  natural  impulse  of  all  those 
who  approach  England  with  some  knowledge  of  her  coast- 
line, and  who  do  not  go  there,  like  the  Angles,  to  see  what 

1  See  above,  Chap.  III.  pp.  65,  60. 


262  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  SAXONS 

unexploited  land  might  still  be  found  there,  they  landed  in  the 
south.  They  made  a  bad  choice.  There,  of  all  places,  they 
came  into  direct  contact  with  Saxons  :  they  were  completely 
repulsed.  But  when  they  made  an  attempt  upon  the  territory 
of  the  Angles,  by  then  but  little  Saxonised,  they  found  their  way 
in,  sometimes  after  a  fight,  sometimes  without  resistance,  and 
had  no  difficulty  in  taking  possession  of  the  land  from  the  north 
as  far  south  as  the  Thames.  At  that  point  they  were  again 
met  by  the  Saxons  and  held  in  check  for  a  long  time.  This 
shows  very  well  how  differently  the  two  races,  the  Saxons 
and  the  Angles,  resisted  the  enemy  a  very  short  time  after 
the  union  of  their  lands. 

It  was  in  the  year  867  that  the  Danes  made  their  victorious 
landing  on  the  coasts  of  East  Anglia  and  Northumbria ;  three 
years  later  (870)  they  crossed  Mercia  and  reached  the  north  of 
the  Thames ;  and  for  eight  years  (870-878)  the  Saxons  held 
them  there  in  check.1 

Thus  it  came  about  that  the  ancient  Anglian  kingdoms 
which  Egbert  had  left  as  autonomous  provinces  under  their 
own  chiefs  in  827,  were  replaced  in  870  by  a  Danish  kingdom 
to  the  north  of  the  Thames.  The  land  south  of  the  Thames 
remained  wholly  in  the  hands  of  the  Saxons. 

So  our  Saxons  were  face  to  face  with  a  new  social  formation, 
that  of  the  Danes  who  had  taken  possession  of  the  lands  of  the 
Angles. 

Who  were  these  Danes  ? 

There  were  Danes  and  Danes.  There  were  the  Danish 
pirates  or  adventurers,  and  the  ordinary  Danes.  They  came 
to  England  one  after  the  other :  the  former  between  867 
and  934  ;  the  latter  from  1004  to  1041.  They  did  not  belong 
to  exactly  the  same  form  of  society. 

Let  us  begin  with  those  who  were  the  first  to  come  to 
England,  the  Danish  pirates.  Their  form  of  society  sheds 
some  light  on  the  later  history  of  the  Odinids  which  is  of  interest. 

The  Angles,  living  as  they  did  in  Schleswig,  were  the  nearest 
neighbours  of  the  Goths,  and  the  two  tribes  were  the  last  rem- 
nants of  all  the  Old  Germans  who  had  once  lived  in  the  Baltic 
plain,  and  who  left  it  uninhabited  before  the  end  of  the  fifth 

1  See,  for  a  detailed  account,  Aug.  Thierry,  La  Conquite  de  VAngletene, 
vol.  i.  pp.  91-102. 


OVER  THE  DANES  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN     263 

century.  After  the  Odinids  had  brought  the  Angles  over  to 
Great  Britain,  there  was  nothing  left  for  them  to  do  but  to 
stir  up  their  own  country.  And  they  rivalled  one  another 
in  their  efforts  to  arouse  its  inhabitants.  In  the  place  of  the 
Old  Germans,  the  Slavs  or  Wends  had  come  to  the  Baltic  plain 
and  occupied  all  the  vacant  land  they  found  there  ;  but  I  have 
already  shown  l  how  it  was  that  the  Odinids  had  less  hold  over 
them  than  over  the  Germans.  Nevertheless,  we  shall  see  later 
on  that  they  thought  it  no  harm  to  make  stirring  expeditions 
among  the  Slav  population. 

In  their  own  country,  the  Odinids,  in  their  quality  of  Jarls 
or  nobles,  ruled  the  Karls,  or  Gothic  peasants,  fairly  well  on 
the  whole,  and  received  their  food  supplies  from  them  in  con- 
sideration of  their  military  protection.  Each  Jarl,  then, 
managed  a  small  part  of  the  population  as  cleverly  as  he  could. 
Gothic  territory  was  divided  into  a  multitude  of  small  princi- 
palities. Generally  speaking,  there  were  as  many  as  there 
were  small  islands,  but  the  large  islands  and  large  peninsulas 
to  the  south  of  Sweden  and  the  north-east  of  Jutland  were 
divided  into  as  many  principalities  as  there  were  promontories 
and  slips  of  land  between  the  innumerable  fiords.  When  the 
south  of  the  Baltic  was  once  for  all  completely  cleared  of  Old 
Germans,  and  these  Jarls  found  themselves  left  face  to  face, 
they  turned  upon  each  other,  as  was  inevitable.  Each  tried 
to  crush  the  other  and  get  the  mastery.  Then,  and  not  till 
then,  was  a  movement  set  on  foot  for  uniting  all  these  small 
principalities  :  the  strongest  and  most  cunning  of  the  Jarls 
tried  to  get  possession  of  the  country  at  the  expense  of  the 
others. 

Those  who  were  worsted  in  the  struggle,  and  were  deprived 
of  all  their  land,  and  could  find  no  more  German  tribes  to  press 
into  their  service  for  further  conquests,  took  to  living  on  the 
sea  in  large  vessels,  and  picking  up,  as  recruits,  any  stray 
persons  on  the  coast  who  were  anxious,  either  for  good  or  bad 
reasons,  to  leave  their  country.  They  were  called  Vikings, 
from  the  word  vik,  bay,  harbour — that  is  to  say,  inhabitants 
of  the  safe  inlets  of  the  sea.  Those  who  had  gained  distinction 
among  them  and  round  whom  the  others  rallied  with  their 
recruits,  or  those  who  joined  them  after  having  lost  the  small 
1  Sec  above,  Chap.  VI.  p.  100. 


264  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  SAXONS 

kingdoms  which  they  had  at  first  succeeded  in  founding  by 
driving  out  a  certain  number  of  men  like  themselves,  took  the 
title  of  kings,  but  of  Kings  of  the  Sea,  for  the  sea  was  the 
only  domain  they  had. 

Such  was  the  origin  of  the  renowned  Vikings  and  Kings  of 
the  Sea.  The  greater  the  number  of  Jarls  that  were  turned 
out  of  the  country  in  the  struggle  for  the  land,  the  more  the 
Vikings  increased  in  number  ;  and  as,  by  the  process  of  selection, 
the  more  powerful  came  to  be  driven  out  after  the  weaker,  so 
the  Vikings  increased  in  power  and  importance.  In  the  end 
the  Gothic  population  was  grouped  under  a  small  number  of 
chiefs  :  the  rest  had  gone  to  swell  the  numbers  of  the  Vikings. 
They  spent  their  time  in  making  raids  upon  the  Scandinavian 
coast  and  carrying  off  everything  they  needed.  This  form  of 
occupation  brought  them  some  kind  of  compensation  for  the 
loss  of  their  own  estates  :  they  called  it  strangling.  But  those 
of  the  Odinids  who  had  succeeded  in  triumphing  over  all  the 
others  on  land  were  not  long  in  organising  a  good  police 
force,  which  worked  all  along  the  coast  on  a  methodical  system. 
This  obliged  the  Sea  Kings  to  take  to  the  open  sea  and  seek 
distant  lands  as  a  field  for  their  piracy. 

That  was  the  beginning  of  the  so-called  Danish  and  Norman 
invasions.  They  began  at  the  end  of  the  reigns  of  Charlemagne 
and  Egbert  the  Great. 

It  is  easy  to  imagine  the  astonishment  of  the  people  living 
on  the  coasts  on  seeing  these  extraordinary  invaders  for  the 
first  time.  The  Danish  invasions  were  regular  incursions  of 
sailors,  and  not  the  mere  landing  of  people  who  had  been  brought 
across  the  sea.  The  method  adopted  by  these  new  invaders — 
a  method  that  no  other  invaders  had  used — was  to  go  as  far  as 
possible  up  the  large  rivers  in  order  to  reach  the  very  heart  of 
the  country  straight  away.  We  saw  how  the  Saxons  landed 
at  the  seaports  on  the  south  of  Great  Britain,  while  the  Angles 
took  shelter  in  the  little  estuaries  of  the  Tyne,  the  Tweed,  and 
the  Tees  ;  but  the  Danes  threaded  their  way  right  up  the  river 
Humber,  just  in  the  same  way  as  the  Normans,  a  little  later, 
made  their  way  up  the  Seine  and  the  Loire  as  far  as  they 
could. 

Here,  then,  we  have  a  social  type  very  different  from  that 
of  the  Saxon  and  that  of  the  Angle  ;  it  is  neither  a  homogeneous 


OVER  THE  DANES  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN     265 

aggregate  of  peasant  emigrants  of  the  particularist  type,  nor 
an  agricultural  people  with  a  communal  system  of  society, 
who  are  transplanted  in  a  body  from  one  place  to  another. 
It  is  a  medley  of  numbers  of  expelled  Odinids  accustomed  to 
both  land  and  sea  fighting,  and  of  a  multitude  of  peasants  of 
every  sort  and  land,  drawn  chiefly  from  among  the  Gothic 
agriculturists  and  townsfolk  of  the  particularist  form  of  society, 
from  the  Norwegian  seacoast  fishermen,  and  from  the  Saxon 
peasants  of  the  particularist  type.  Each  member  of  this  medley 
was  seeking  his  fortune,  but  each  in  his  own  manner,  each  with 
a  different  object.  The  aim  of  the  Odinids,  great  and  small 
alike,  was  to  exploit  other  races  by  getting  them  under  their 
political  domination  and  making  them  pay  tribute.  The 
emigrants  of  patriarchal  habits,  the  Goths,  were  divided  into 
a  superior  class,  who  wished  to  practise  agriculture  on  the  com- 
munal system,  and  a  mass  of  nobodies,  who  looked  forward  to  a 
life  of  rapine  and  pillage.  The  emigrants  of  the  particularist 
form  of  society  who  came  straight  from  their  seacoast  fishing, 
the  Norwegians,  were  quite  ready  to  take  part  in  a  succession 
of  sea  excursions  and  accept  all  the  profits  to  be  gained  from 
piracy  and  commerce,  but  only  for  a  time  ;  their  ultimate  object 
was  to  settle  down  on  independent  estates  when  they  had 
become  rich  and  had  reached  a  mature  age.  Finally,  the 
particularist  emigrants  who  had  come  from  a  life  of  agriculture 
pure  and  simple,  the  Saxons,  above  all  aspired  to  the  possession 
of  independent  estates,  which  were  to  be  secured  as  speedily 
as  possible. 

The  diversity  of  elements  composing  these  bodies  of  Danish 
invaders,  which  reappeared  later  on  in  the  bands  of  Norman 
invaders,  admirably  explains  their  habits  of  life.  Generally 
speaking,  they  very  seldom  settled  in  a  place.  They  found  it 
very  difficult  to  stop  anywhere  ;  they  passed  from  country  to 
country,  even  when  they  had  won  a  victory  and  swept  a  region 
clear.  When  they  did  stop,  there  was  a  whole  class  among 
them  which  laid  claim  to  a  certain  superiority,  and  lived  by 
the  power  it  exercised  over  the  rest,  while  under  that  class 
there  was  a  whole  soldiery  which  did  not  live  only  on  its  pay, 
but  on  the  harvests  of  rapine  and  crime.  Then,  on  certain 
well-defined  areas,  agricultural  settlements  of  the  Saxon 
type  appeared,  and  from  them  sprang  a  well-established  and 


266  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  SAXONS 

enduring  race  ;  but  that  race  was  the  outcome  of  the  Saxons 
and  Norwegians.  The  other  invaders  were  gradually  eliminated. 

It  is  possible,  then,  from  an  analysis  of  their  social  system, 
to  give  the  following  precise  definition  of  the  Danish  pirates. 
They  were  the  descendants  of  patriarchal  warriors  (the  Odinids) 
or  of  patriarchal  husbandmen  (the  Goths),  who,  by  using  arms 
as  instruments  of  labour,  and  navigation  as  their  means  of 
transport,  lived  on  the  produce  of  the  farms  of  others,  either  by 
methodical  plundering,  or  by  a  systematic  military  domination 
and  collection  of  tribute  money.  They  brought  in  their  train 
a  certain  number  of  emigrants,  either  accustomed  to  seacoast 
fishing  (the  Norwegians),  or  trained  to  agriculture  in  particu- 
larist  families  (the  Saxons),  who  were  both  desirous  of  making 
independent  estates  for  themselves. 

We  have  thus  sorted  out  this  great  medley  of  people,  and 
there  is  not  a  single  characteristic  point  in  the  invasions  of  the 
Danish  pirates  which  does  not  become  intelligible  by  the  help 
of  these  preliminary  statements,  and  does  not  in  its  turn  cor- 
roborate them.  Any  historian,  no  matter  whom,  will  supply 
a  superabundance  of  evidence  for  these  facts. 

To  sum  up.  The  result  of  the  social  constitution  of  the 
Danish  invaders  was  that  they  could  only  occupy  Great  Britain 
by  force  of  arms,  or  at  most  plant  here  and  there  about  the 
country  emigrants  of  the  particularist  form  of  society.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  nothing  further  resulted  from  their  occupation 
of  the  whole  of  the  territory  peopled  by  the  Angles,  over  which 
they  spread,  as  we  saw,  in  three  years,  from  867  to  870.  Both 
great  and  small  retained  their  arms,  took  the  direction  and 
execution  of  public  affairs  into  their  own  hands,  and  lived,  like 
governors  and  government  officials,  at  the  expense  of  the  in- 
habitants, on  the  money  contributed  by  the  taxes,  which  were 
levied  in  a  systematic  or  arbitrary  manner.  They  were  checked 
abruptly  on  the  north  side  of  the  Thames,  at  the  frontier  of  the 
Saxon  people.  The  Saxons  had  chosen  as  their  leader,  by 
their  usual  method  of  election,  a  descendant  of  Cerdic  and 
Egbert,  one  worthy  of  his  fathers :  Alfred,  who  well  deserved 
the  epithet  of  Great. 

We  are  now  coming  to  one  of  those  occasions  when  the 
Saxon  race  in  England  behaved  most  memorably,  and  we  shall 
be  able  to  realise  still  more  vividly  the  mainsprings  of  its  action. 


OVER  THE  DANES  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN     267 

"  King  Alfred,"  says  Augustin  Thierry,  "  was  more  learned 
than  any  of  his  compatriots.  In  his  youth  he  had  travelled  about 
the  southern  countries  of  Europe,  and  had  observed  the  customs 
which  prevailed  there."  (I  italicise  the  causes  which  might  have 
made  Alfred  turn  aside  from  the  Saxon  habit  of  life,  but  failed 
to  do  so.)  "He  knew  the  learned  languages  and  the  greater  part 
of  the  writings  of  antiquity.  The  superior  knowledge  which  the 
king  had  acquired  inspired  him  with  a  kind  of  disdain  for  the 
nation  he  ruled.  He  set  but  little  store  by  the  intelligence 
and  prudence  displayed  by  the  great  national  council.  Filled 
with  the  idea  of  absolute  power,  which  the  literature  and  history 
of  the  Roman  Empire  brought  before  his  imagination,  he  con- 
ceived a  vehement  desire  to  make  political  reforms.  Tradition 
has  handed  down  some  vague  memories  of  the  severe  measures 
adopted  by  Alfred's  Government ;  the  excessive  rigour  with 
which  he  caused  liars  and  false  judges  to  be  punished  was  talked 
of  long  after  his  death.  Although  this  rigorous  policy  was 
intended  for  the  good  of  the  English  people,  it  could  not  have  been 
agreeable  to  a  nation  which  thought  more  of  the  life  of  a  freeman 
than  of  regularity  in  public  affairs.  Moreover,  Alfred's  severity 
towards  the  great  was  not  accompanied  by  affability  towards 
the  humble."  l 

So  when,  seven  years  after  his  election  and  eight  years 
after  the  first  attempts  of  the  Danes  to  sail  up  the  Thames, 
Alfred  had  to  repulse  a  fresh  attack  of  the  invaders,  it  was  in 
vain  that  he  sent  his  messenger  through  the  villages  and  the 
country  side  carrying  the  arrow  and  the  naked  sword  and 
shouting,  "  Let  him  who  doth  not  wish  to  be  held  a  man  of 
nought  leave  his  house  and  come  to  battle  !  That  oelc  man  the 
were  un-nithing  sceel  de  cuman  !  "  Very  few  men  came,  and 
Alfred  found  himself  almost  alone.  This  is  an  excellent 
example  of  the  way  in  which  the  people  carried  on  self-govern- 
ment independently  of  the  Witenagemot,  which  had  not  deposed 
King  Alfred.  It  decided  pending  questions  in  its  own  way, 
without  having  recourse  to  violence  or  political  agitations, 
without  going  beyond  its  rights  or  beyond  private  action. 

The  Saxons,  then,  who  thus  remained  at  home,  knew  that 
they  would  inevitably  have  to  submit  to  be  taxed  by  the  Danes, 
who  this  time,  as  no  resistance  was  opposed  to  them,  spread 

1  La  Conqucte  de  V Angletene,  vol.  i.  bk.  ii.  pp.  101,  102. 


268  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  SAXONS 

all  over  the  land  to  the  south  of  the  Thames,  which  was  the 
Saxon's  own  property.  The  Saxons  evidently  preferred  to 
pay  heavy  taxes  rather  than  make  for  themselves  a  regular, 
national,  autocratic  government. 

So  the  Danes  occupied  the  whole  of  England  by  force  of 
arms.  It  would  seem  as  though  the  power  of  the  Saxons  was 
now  exhausted,  and  that  all  was  up  with  them.  Nothing  of 
the  kind,  however ;  for  the  race  did  not  disappear,  it  did  not 
change  its  form  of  society  ;  conseqiiently,  everything  remained 
as  it  was,  as  we  shall  soon  see. 

Alfred  was  aroused  from  his  dreams  of  Roman  and  feudal 
forms  of  government  by  the  firm  decision  his  people  had  made 
to  submit  to  the  demands  of  the  Danes  rather  than  follow 
him.  This  time  he  set  to  work  after  the  manner  of  the  Saxons  : 
we  shall  see  how  he  succeeded. 

Alone,  absolutely  alone,  fleeing  from  the  Danes  through 
the  forests,  he  realised  that  he  must  depend  absolutely  on 
himself,  like  the  humblest  of  the  Saxons.  Assuming  a  new 
name,  he  went  to  the  most  distant  limits  of  Saxon  territory 
near  Cornwall,  and  settled  on  a  peninsula  enclosed  by  marshes, 
where  two  rivers  met,  the  Tone  and  the  Parret.  He  stayed  with 
a  peasant  fisherman,  and  had  in  his  turn  to  watch  the  baking 
of  the  bread  beneath  the  cinders.  There  he  quietly  gathered 
round  him  a  few  neighbours  and  friends,  and  began  with  their 
aid  to  fortify  his  peninsula  with  entrenchments  and  palisades. 
He  increased  his  band  a  little,  and  then  made  sorties  and  began 
to  harass  the  Danish  outposts  in  the  neighbourhood.  After 
six  months  he  thought  the  time  had  come  to  make  known  to 
the  Saxons  what  he  was  doing  :  he  revealed  his  name,  and 
by  aid  of  messengers  appointed  the  Stone  of  Egbert,  near  the 
Great  Forest,  only  a  few  miles  from  the  principal  Danish  en- 
campment, as  a  rendezvous.  This  time  the  Saxons  rose,  and 
in  good  earnest.  Alfred,  however,  determined  to  go  himse:f 
to  observe  the  enemy's  position :  disguised  as  a  harp-player, 
he  amused  the  Danish  soldiers  and  surveyed  the  camp  at  his 
leisure. 

At  last  Wessex  raised  its  banner. 

I  hope  the  reader  will  excuse  my  emotion  at  being  the 
first  spectator  of  the  patient  growth  of  this  splendid  epic  of 
the  Saxon  race,  for  I  cannot  see  the  gallant  banner  of  Wessex 


OVER  THE  DANES  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN     269 

raised  for  a  new  and  still  harder  fight  for  liberty,  after  so  many 
bygone  efforts,  without  saluting  it  with  three  cheers  !  The 
attack  was  so  deadly  that  Godrun,  the  Danish  king,  evacuated 
the  whole  of  the  Saxon  territory  and  made  an  alliance  with 
Alfred.  It  took  place  in  the  year  879,  six  months  only  after 
the  invasion  of  Wessex. 

After  its  rapid  liberation,  Wessex  rested  on  its  oars  for 
some  time.  But  twenty-five  years  later  it  again  took  the 
offensive,  and  in  thirty  years  freed  the  whole  of  the  territory 
of  the  Angles  just  as  it  had  freed  its  own  (from  905  to  934). 
The  Danish  pirates  were  wholly  rooted  out  of  England,  and 
Ethelstan,  King  of  Wessex,  a  descendant  of  Cerdic,  Egbert, 
and  Alfred,  asserted  once  more  the  triumph  of  the  Saxon  race 
all  over  the  island. 

But  we  must  not  forget  that  we  still  have  to  consider  the 
second  band  of  Danes  :  the  regular  Danes.  Fifty  years  after 
the  expulsion  of  the  pirates,  the  regular  Danes  in  their  turn 
arrived  in  England  (991). 

It  must  be  acknowledged  that  the  Saxon  people  had  their 
work  cut  out  for  them. 

Who  were  the  regular  Danes  ? 

They  were  the  very  people  who  had  expelled  the  Danish 
pirates  from  Scandinavia  and  taken  possession  of  their  lands, 
and  made  themselves  kings  of  the  land  (tlieod-hongs,  filke- 
kongs),  while  they  forced  the  others  to  become  sea-kings. 
One  of  these  land-kings  succeeded  in  subjecting  to  his  authority 
all  the  large  islands  of  Scandinavia,  the  south  of  Sweden  or 
Scania,  and  Jutland  :  the  whole  kingdom  was  called  Denmark. 
We  saw  how  the  Odinids,  when  turned  out  of  their  domains, 
swept  down  upon  Europe  with  the  outcasts  of  the  population  ; 
we  shall  now  see  how  the  Odinids  who  remained  masters  of  the 
land  in  their  turn  swept  down  upon  Europe  with  the  regular 
part  of  the  population  after  having  sufficiently  assured  their 
authority  at  home.  It  must  be  observed  with  what  admirable 
precision  this  Odinid  race  follows  the  law  of  its  development. 

The  regular  Danes,  who  belonged  to  the  pure  Gothic  type, 
brought  something  to  Great  Britain  similar  to  what  the  Angles 
had  brought.  But  they  came  at  a  later  stage  and  followed 
after  them — that  is  to  say,  they  found  the  land  under  cultiva- 
tion, and  no  longer  in  the  primitive  state  in  which  the  Angles 


270  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  SAXONS 

had  taken  it  from  the  hands  of  the  Britons.  Further:  the  inter- 
course, such  as  was  carried  on  between  the  Saxons  and  the 
Angles,  had  caused  them  both  to  make  progress,  and  it  is  beyond 
a  doubt  that  the  Anglo-Saxon  population  was,  taking  it  all 
round,  more  advanced  in  civilisation  than  even  the  regular 
Danish  population.  Now,  when  a  race  belonging  to  a  patri- 
archal form  of  society  like  that  of  the  Danes  finds  the  land 
not  only  already  under  cultivation,  but  cultivated  according 
to  the  most  advanced  methods,  it*  does  not  know  how  to  find 
a  place  for  itself  among  the  agriculturists  ;  it  can  only  form 
itself  into  a  governing  class,  and  live  at  the  expense  of  the 
others.  So  the  new  Danish  invasion  was  only  a  political 
conquest. 

That  explains  the  quite  peculiar  and  at  first  sight  surprising 
attitude  which  the  Saxons  adopted  with  regard  to  it.  A  few 
historians  have  understood  it ;  the  rest  have  hunted  out  a 
quantity  of  explanations  which  an  examination  of  the  facts 
has  shown  to  be  false.  The  Saxons  at  the  outset  simply  made 
a  covenant  with  the  conquering  Danes,  who  were  a  regular 
political  power  ;  like  good  men  of  business,  they  offered  to  pay 
the  money  which  they  would  have  spent  in  making  war  against 
them  direct  to  the  Danes,  and  asked  them  in  return  to  live 
peaceably  in  their  midst.  This  was  the  famous  tax  of  the 
Danegeld.  In  this  we  clearly  recognise  those  Saxons  described 
by  Tacitus,  who  in  their  easy-going  way  are  ready  to  fight,  "  si 
res  poscat,  if  the  cause  is  worth  the  trouble,"  but  not  otherwise. 

The  Saxon  population  of  England,  with  its  small  estates, 
must  have  been  extraordinarily  good  at  work  :  it  is  astounding 
to  find  that  the  people  had  produced  enough  to  move  such  a 
host  of  plunderers  of  all  kinds  to  covetousness,  in  the  face  of 
such  frequent  and  such  severe  trials  ;  and  yet  it  is  certain  that 
the  Danes  secured  a  tremendous  amount  of  booty  among  them, 
and  that  the  Saxons  paid  them  enormous  sums,  as  if  it  was 
some  economical  contrivance,  in  order  that  they  might  be 
allowed  to  pursue  their  labours  in  peace. 

After  having  gone  off  with  their  first  Danegeld,  the  Danes 
made  a  new  attempt  in  a  second  expedition.  It  turned  out 
that  the  Saxons  still  thought  it  was  better  to  pay,  although 
they  might  have  to  pay  more  heavily.  And,  as  there  was  no 
reason  why  this  ransom  should  not  be  demanded  again,  they 


OVER  THE  DANES  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN     271 

thought  it  quicker  and  less  costly  to  allow  the  King  of  Denmark 
to  levy  a  direct  tax  upon  them  at  certain  times,  and  to  consider 
him  as  King  of  England.  In  this  simple  manner  it  came  about 
that  the  Danish  royal  power  was  substituted  for  the  Saxon 
royal  power  in  England. 

But  though  one  royal  power  was  substituted  for  another, 
we  know  that  one  race  was  not  substituted  for  another ;  and 
as  the  Saxon  race  still  continued,  nothing  was  changed  after 
all.  In  accordance  with  the  way  in  which  we  have  observed 
it  to  proceed  hitherto,  the  Saxon  race  watched  the  development 
of  circumstances.  On  the  death  of  the  King  of  Denmark,  the 
Saxons  returned  to  the  election  of  a  Saxon  king  as  if  nothing 
had  happened ;  and  with  this  step  they  regained  the  political 
liberty  of  Wessex,  but  of  Wessex  only.  Wessex  was  always 
to  the  fore  !  Diverse  accidents  caused  it  to  adopt  now  a 
Danish  and  now  a  Saxon  king.  Kings,  as  we  have  already 
seen,  were  only  of  a  very  second-rate  importance  in  its  eyes ! 

Finally,  only  twenty-seven  years  after  the  Saxons  had 
first  accepted  a  Danish  king,  certain  events  took  place,  and  so 
simply  and  spontaneously  were  they  enacted  that  no  historian 
has  found  in  any  part  of  them  matter  for  a  longer  account  of 
them  than  the  following  : 

"  At  the  death  of  the  Danish  king  Hardeknut,  which  took 
place  suddenly  in  the  midst  of  a  marriage  feast,  before  the 
Danes  had  assembled  to  choose  a  new  king,  an  insurrectionary 
army  was  formed  under  the  leadership  of  a  Saxon  called  Hown. 
Unfortunately,  the  patriotic  deeds  done  by  that  army  are  now 
as  unknown  as  the  name  of  its  leader  is  obscure."  (It  was  an- 
other instance  of  the  self-dependency  of  the  Saxons.)  "  Godwin, 
a  Saxon,  who  had  risen  to  some  importance  under  the  govern- 
ment of  the  Danish  kings,  and  with  him  his  son  named  Harold, 
this  time  raised  the  standard  of  independence  against  all  Danes, 
whether  kings  or  claimants,  chiefs  or  soldiers."  (And  mark 
this  well :)  "  The  Danes,  finding  themselves  in  a  short  space 
pressed  back  towards  the  north  and  hunted  from  town  to  town, 
put  out  to  sea  in  their  ships,  and  landed  with  diminished 
numbers  on  the  shores  of  their  ancient  fatherland."  1 

It  was  all  over.  The  Danish  domination  was  completely 
and  for  ever  at  an  end. 

1  Aug.  Thierry,  La  Conqutte  de  Is  Angletzrre,  vol.  i.  bk.  ii.  p.  162. 


272  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  SAXONS 

It  cannot  now  be  doubted,  I  think,  that,  as  I  have  already 
explained,  this  invasion  was  nothing  more  than  a  political 
conquest,  and  the  conduct  exhibited  by  the  Saxon  people  in 
that  severe  trial  cannot  be  too  much  admired,  whatever  the 
majority  of  historians,  with  their  lack  of  clear  judgment,  may 
say  to  the  contrary. 

Again,  once  more,  England  belonged  to  the  Saxons,  from 
the  Forth  in  Scotland  to  the  Tamar  in  Cornwall. 

But  we  are  not  yet  out  of  the  wood  :  the  Normans  are 
about  to  land  in  England . 


CHAPTER  XYII 

THE  TRIUMPH  OF  THE  SAXONS  OVER  NORMAN 
FEUDALISM  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN 

WE  have  seen  the  unstable  character  of  the  Danish  domi- 
nation in  England.  But  that  is,  after  all,  only  the 
negative  side  of  the  history  of  the  Saxons  in  Great  Britain. 
The  positive  side  of  the  great  struggle  against  the  Danes  was 
the  fact  that  it  had  been  led  and  directed  by  the  Saxon  people 
themselves  far  more  than  by  their  chiefs  :  self-government  is 
therein  manifested  in  all  the  fulness  of  its  power.  The  fore- 
going account  brought  out  that  point  sufficiently  clearly,  but 
it  is  important  to  emphasise  it  at  this  juncture,  as  it  will  provide 
us  with  the  explanation  of  what  follows. 

After  the  Saxon  people  had  taken  the  leadership  into  their 
own  hands  and  had  passed  the  crisis ;  had  accepted,  rejected, 
and  again  accepted  Alfred  as  their  leader ;  had  elected  each 
of  their  kings  in  turn,  and  deposed  them  if  they  proved  incapable  ; 
had  accepted  the  tax  of  Danegeld  and  a  Danish  king  ;  had 
discussed  the  succession  at  each  change  of  sovereign ;  had 
repelled  Hardeknut's  (or  Hardicanut's)  successor  with  violence ; 
had  roused  Godwin  the  Saxon,  who  ruled  Wessex  in  the  name 
of  the  Danes,  to  set  about  the  liberation  of  the  land  ;  had  finally 
driven  out  the  new  invaders  from  every  part  of  the  island — • 
they  then  chose  them  a  king,  who  won  no  small  renown  in  the 
triumph  he  achieved  :  King  Edward,  afterwards  called  Edward 
the  Confessor.  He  was  a  descendant  of  Cerdic,  Egbert,  and 
Alfred  ;  but  when  he  was  obliged  to  withdraw  to  give  place  to  a 
Danish  king,  he  had  fled  to  Normandy,  whence  he  was  recalled. 

Just  as  the  Saxon  people  had  managed  its  own  affairs  during 

the  struggle,  so  it  continued  to  manage  them  after  the  victory. 

At  the  departure  of  the  foreign  king  and  the  return  of  the 

national  king,  it  took  care  to  have  the  Saxon  customs  in  all 

18 


274  THE  TRIUMPH  OF  THE  SAXONS 

their  purity  drawn  up  in  due  and  authenticated  form.  The 
usages  thus  drawn  up  and  confirmed  by  the  people  and  their 
leader  form  what  is  called  the  Common  Law,  or  the  laws  of  King 
Edward  ;  they  are  still  famous  in  England.  The  Common  Law 
was  the  corner-stone  of  English  institutions  :  it  was  the  solemn 
and  formal  declaration  of  the  constitution  which  was  the 
spontaneous  product  of  the  Saxon  people,  after  it  was  freed 
from  the  domination  of  foreigners  by  its  own  guidance.  Never 
was  there  a  more  national  political  monument. 

To  this  event  was  due  the  celebrity  of  Edward  the  Con- 
fessor's reign.  It  was  then  that  the  Saxon  people,  after  having 
suffered  so  many  vicissitudes  since  their  arrival  in  England, 
were  at  length  able  to  observe  their  traditional  customs,  now 
definitely  confirmed,  freely  and  without  restraint,  throughout 
the  length  and  breadth  of  Anglo-Saxon  territory.  It  was  the 
final  completion  of  the  work  begun  by  Cerdic,  the  establish- 
ment of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  in  Great  Britain. 

But  the  Saxons  were  not  allowed  to  enjoy  their  triumphant 
victory  for  long  in  peace.  They  were  forced  to  again  take 
up  the  gauntlet,  and  engage  in  a  struggle  which  was  more 
terrible  than  all  the  others.  The  Norman  invasion  was  about 
to  succeed  the  Danish  invasion. 

We  shall  get  a  fairly  clear  notion  of  the  character  and  results 
of  the  Norman  conquest  if  we  first  of  all  recognise  that  it  was 
a  perfected  form  of  a  Danish  invasion. 

Who  were  the  Normans  ? 

We  have  seen  how  the  competition  of  the  Odinids  among 
themselves  in  the  Scandinavian  states  resulted,  in  the  first 
place,  in  the  amalgamation  of  a  group  of  lands  to  form  Den- 
mark, or  the  Danish  kingdom.  This  group  of  lands,  which  had 
the  island  of  Zealand,  the  richest  land  in  Scandinavia,  as  its 
centre,  as  it  still  has,  must  have  been  the  first  to  form  a  con- 
stitution, owing  to  that  very  richness  of  the  soil,  which  is  always 
a  cause  of  superiority  in  a  country.  The  island  of  Zealand 
promptly  succeeded  in  annexing  all  the  surrounding  lands — 
that  is  to  say,  the  island  of  Fyen,  the  small  neighbouring 
islands,  Scania,  the  south  of  Sweden,  and  Jutland.  But  the 
lands  to  the  north,  which  were  farther  away,  escaped  annexa- 
tion and  formed  separate  groups. 

In  the  Swedish  part  of  the  basin  of  the  Baltic,  north  of 


OVER  NORMAN  FEUDALISM  275 

Scania  and  separated  from  it  by  the  large  lakes  Wener  and 
Wetter,  a  union  was  formed  under  the  name  of  the  kingdom 
of  Upsala,  afterwards  the  kingdom  of  Sweden.  The  Odinids, 
who  in  the  struggle  preceding  the  formation  of  this  kingdom 
were  expelled  from  their  lands,  did  not  find  it  so  easy  to  fall 
back  upon  the  "  kingdom  of  the  sea  "  as  the  Danish  pirates 
had  done.  The  ice  which  persistently  blocked  the  gulfs  of 
Finland  and  Bothnia  was  less  favourable  to  piracy.  The 
Atlantic,  too,  the  real  source  of  fortune  of  the  kings  of  the  sea, 
was  farther  off.  In  order  to  reach  it,  it  was  necessary  to  thread 
one's  way  through  the  narrow  Danish  waters,  with  every  chance 
of  a  sharp  fight  with  the  regular  Danish  forces. 

So  those  ejected  from  the  kingdom  of  Upsala  did  not  become 
Vikings,  frequenters  of  harbours  and  roadsteads,  but  ordinary 
Vardgues — that  is  to  say,  exiles.  And  they  went  to  seek  ad- 
venture in  the  east,  since  the  west  was  barred  to  them.  They 
landed  on  the  coast  opposite  Upsala,  carried  on  piracy,  traded 
with  the  Fins  and  Slavs  after  a  fashion,  made  a  special  alliance 
with  the  Slav  republic  of  Novgorod,  founded  the  first  princi- 
palities, such  as  those  of  Novgorod  itself  and  Kieff,  antecedents 
of  the  Russian  Empire,  went  as  far  south  as  Constantinople, 
and  entered  the  service  of  the  Byzantine  emperors.  Thus 
these  last  representatives  of  the  Odinid  invaders  retraced  the 
same  road  which  their  fathers  had  followed  with  the  Goths, 
and  returned  to  the  east  under  the  names  of  Ostrogoths  and 
Visigoths.  Thereby  the  circle  of  the  radiation  of  the  Odinids 
over  all  Europe  from  their  centre  in  Scandinavia  was  completed. 

The  social  constitution  of  the  bands  of  Varegues  was  similar 
to  that  of  the  bands  of  Danish  pirates,  but  they  travelled  far 
more  by  land  than  by  sea. 

So  much  for  the  history  of  the  regions  north  of  Danish 
territory  in  the  basin  of  the  Baltic. 

In  the  basin  of  the  North  Sea  another  group  had  been 
formed,  which  was  separated  from  Sweden  by  the  enormous 
chain  of  Scandinavian  mountains  which  terminate  to  the  east 
of  the  great  gulf  of  Christiania.  The  Odinids,  accompanied 
by  bands  of  emigrants,  mainly  Norwegians,  attempted  to 
create  a  few  settlements  in  the  two  Norwegian  plateaux,  which 
are  absolutely  distinct  from  the  coastland  with  its  precipitous 
fiords,  and  exactly  reproduce  the  geographical  system  of 


276  THE  TRIUMPH  OF  THE  SAXONS 

Sweden — I  mean  the  plateaux  of  Christiania  and  Trondhjem. 
They  formed  the  embryo  of  the  kingdom  of  Norway,  which 
was  founded  in  the  following  way  : 

Harald,  a  descendant  of  Odin  in  the  twenty-sixth  generation, 
according  to  Torfaeus,  was  one  of  the  Jarls,  or  petty  princes, 
who  ruled  the  lands  of  the  Norwegian  plateaux  in  the  ninth 
century.  He  was  only  ten  years  old  when  he  lost  his  father, 
Halfdan  the  Black.  The  neighbouring  Jarls,  according  to 
their  usual  method  of  procedure,  invaded  the  territory  of  the 
young  heir.  But  Harald,  with  the  aid  of  his  uncle  Guthorm, 
got  the  better  of  his  enemies.  After  numerous  rights,  in  which 
he  had  the  advantage,  he  realised  that  it  might  be  within  his 
power  to  bring  all  the  flat  lands  of  Norway  under  his  authority, 
and  he  made  a  vow  to  leave  his  hair  unkempt  until  he  should 
have  brought  his  enterprise  to  a  successful  termination  :  a  vow 
which  reminds  us  of  the  Old  Germany  of  Tacitus.1  He  did 
not  achieve  his  purpose  without  difficulty,  for  he  had  to  fight 
with  tough  adversaries.  At  last,  after  ten  years,  the  naval 
battle  of  Hafursfiord  freed  him  from  his  vow.  He  was  no 
longer  Harald  Lufa — that  is  to  say,  "  of  the  unkempt  locks  " 
but  Harald  Haarfager — that  is  to  say,  "  of  the  beautiful  hair  "- 
a  name  which  Rognvald,  his  most  faithful  friend,  gave  him 
after  the  victory.  This  Rognvald,  by  the  way,  was  the  father 
of  Rolf  or  Rollo,  whom  we  shall  find  at  the  head  of  the  Normans. 

It  will  be  observed  that  Harald  triumphed  over  his  neigh- 
bouring rivals  and  became  King  of  Norway  through  his  success 
in  a  naval  battle.  It  is  clear  that  the  art  of  navigation  among 
the  Odinids  in  Norway  must  have  developed  far  more  than  in 
Denmark.  The  Arctic  Ocean  and  the  North  Sea  submitted 
them  to  a  course  of  training  far  superior  to  that  of  the  Baltic 
and  its  dependencies.  The  Jarls,  or  petty  princes,  who  were 
debarred  from  the  countries  afterwards  known  as  Trondhjem 
and  Opslo  or  Christiania,  took  to  the  sea  wonderfully.  But 
Harald  defended  his  coastline  vigorously,  and  the  new  Vikings 
were  obliged  to  seek  a  refuge  in  the  remote  and  unhospitable 
islands  of  the  Orcades  and  Hebrides,  or  even  in  Iceland.  Eng- 
land would  have  suited  them  better,  to  be  sure,  but  it  was  then 
paying  tribute  to  the  Danes. 

Now  it  happened  that  Rolf  or  Rollo,  son  of  Rognvald, 

1  Cf.  Ger mania,  xxxi. 


OVER  NORMAN  FEUDALISM  277 

Harald's  great  friend — counting,  of  course,  on  the  special  affec- 
tion the  King  of  Norway  had  for  his  father — made  up  his  mind 
to  make  a  strandhug,  or  raid,  with  his  comrades  upon  the  Nor- 
wegian coast  on  his  way  back  from  an  expedition  in  the  Baltic. 
Harald  summoned  a  thing,  a  council,  which  condemned  the 
offender  to  exile.  It  was  in  vain  that  Hillda,  Rolf's  mother, 
asked  for  pardon  for  her  son,  and  represented  to  the  king  that 
he  might  easily  return  from  exile  with  a  more  formidable  band  ; 
Harald  was  inflexible.  Rolf  launched  his  ships  and  sailed  for 
the  Hebrides.1 

He  stirred  up  all  the  Odinids  and  their  followers  whom  he 
met  in  the  retreats  of  the  Hebrides.  His  rank,  his  daring,  and 
his  enormous  stature  soon  caused  him  to  be  chosen  as  the 
chief  of  the  whole  band.  He  was  called  Gang-Rolf — that  is  to 
say,  Rolf  the  Walker — because  he  was  so  tall  that  he  could  not 
find  among  the  small  kinds  of  horses  of  the  north,  like  those 
of  Shetland,  a  single  horse  capable  of  bearing  him,  and  so  he 
always  went  on  foot. 

With  this  band  of  recruits  from  the  Hebrides  as  his  following, 
he  went  on  board  again,  rounded  the  north  of  Scotland  and 
sailed  towards  the  Escaut.  He  probably  met  with  a  bad 
welcome  there,  for  he  immediately  looked  out  for  a  better  field 
of  adventure  farther  south  in  Neustria  :  he  entered  the  mouth 
of  the  Seine. 

The  rest  of  his  story  is  sufficiently  well  known.  It  culmin- 
ated in  the  treaty  of  St.-Clair-sur-Epte  in  911,  and  in  the 
foundation  of  the  so-called  duchy  of  Normandy.  What  special 
name  was  it  possible  to  give  to  this  confused  medley  of  men 
from  the  north  ?  They  were  named  Northmen,  Normans. 

When  Rolf  was  uncontested  master  of  Rouen,  of  the  country 
of  Caux,  of  Lieuvin  (Lisieux),  and  of  Bessin  (Bayeux),  which 
he  had  laid  waste,  he  invited  people  to  come  and  live  there, 
promising  to  guard  them  with  a  good  police  force  as  Harald 
had  done.  Thereupon  the  coast  of  Old  Neustria  became 
repeopled  with  every  kind  of  person  attracted  thither  from 
IJorway,  from  the  Saxon  plain,  and  from  Frankish  territory. 
Thus  was  formed  that  characteristic  Norman  population,  led, 
as  we  see,  by  Odinids,  but  recruited  from  peasants  from  the 
northern  countries  I  have  just  mentioned,  which,  generally 

1  See  Haralds  Saga,  Snorro,  c.  1,  2,  19,  20,  23,  24. 


278  THE  TRIUMPH  OF  THE  SAXONS 

speaking,  belonged  to  the  particularist  type  of  society.  Never- 
theless, the  remains  of  the  Gallo-Koman  or  Gothic  race,  which 
still  existed  in  a  part  of  this  region,  mingled  with  the  new  popula- 
tion. The  Normandy  of  the  interior,  which  was  ceded  in  a 
more  friendly  manner  to  the  invaders  and  was  less  ravaged 
by  them,  still  preserves  its  Gallo-Roman  character  most  un- 
mistakably, as  may  be  seen  by  the  way  in  which  the  population 
there  is  clustered  together  in  large  villages,  in  striking  contrast 
to  the  population  living  nearer  the  sea. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  their  constitution,  then,  the 
Normans  present  a  rather  different  aspect  from  that  which 
is  generally  pictured. 

The  Normans  who  won  renown  by  their  warlike  exploits 
were  pure  Odinids.  They  represented  in  its  most  complete 
form  that  race,  which,  devoted  as  it  was  to  warfare,  had  been 
forced  to  vent  its  energies  upon  itself  for  a  time  when  it  was 
confined  in  the  Scandinavian  states  after  the  general  occupation 
of  Europe  by  the  barbarians,  and  then  spent  all  that  was  left 
in  a  last  distant  expedition,  more  exclusively  Odinid  than  all 
the  rest — the  invasion  of  the  Danish  Vikings,  of  the  Swedish 
Varegues,  and  of  the  Norwegian  Vikings,  called  Normans. 

These  Norwegian  Vikings  were  in  no  sense  seacoast  fisher- 
men.    They  were  Odinids  who  had  passed  from  the  land  of 
the  Goths  to  the  plateaux  of  Norway  and  preserved  their  Odinid 
manner  of  life,  fighting  one  another,  and  trying  to  live  cleverly 
on  the  seacoast  fishermen   of   the   less  precipitous  and  less 
solitary  fiords,  as  they  had  formerly  succeeded  in  living  on  the 
Gothic  peasant,  without  setting  him  against  them  or  destroying 
him.     It  was  not  till  they  were  driven  from  the  land  by  their 
peers  that  these  Norwegian  Odinids  became  Vikings ;   and  if 
they  happened  to  be  more  daring  sailors  than  the  rest,  it  was 
because  they  had  to  serve  an  apprenticeship  with  a  rougher  sea. 
The  Norman  warrior  chief  was  probably  the  highest  pro- 
duction of  the  Odinid  form  of  society.     He  was  a  man  of  colossal 
strength,  whose  education,  both  physical  and  mental,  had  tended 
to  make  him  an  army  in  himself.      Owing  to  the  fear  which  his 
personal  strength  inspired,  the  renown  which  it  brought  him,  and 
the  dauntless  character  it  engendered,  he  was  quite  prepared 
to  take  the  lead  over  young  blades  of  the  same  stamp.     That 
was  enough  to  form  the  basis  of  an  organisation.     The  interest, 


OVER  NORMAN  FEUDALISM  279 

the  constant  amusement  of  this  man  was  to  establish  order  by 
his  arbitrary  will  in  everything  he  was  able  to  bring  under  his 
power.  If  that  order  annoyed  him  personally,  he  would  violate 
it,  arbitrarily  likewise,  but  would  not  suffer  anyone  else  to  do 
so.  That  sort  of  discipline  was  the  guarantee  of  his  life  and 
authority.  If  perchance  he  found  that  he  lost  his  power  over 
his  following,  he  employed  manoeuvres,  caressed,  heaped  his 
men  with  favours  and  booty,  used  cunning ;  but  as  soon 
as  he  saw  that  the  moment  had  come  when  he  was  again  the 
strongest,  he  withdrew  everything,  was  pitiless,  and  made 
terrible  examples.  He  was  too  much  of  a  warrior  ever  to  have 
learned  agriculture ;  but  there  were  two  ways  in  which  he 
procured  for  himself  the  produce  of  the  earth.  If  he  merely 
wanted  provisions  on  a  journey,  he  would  make  a  raid,  and 
carry  off  the  crops  as  if  it  were  a  game  ;  and  he  carried  the  game 
so  far  as  to  kill  the  peasant  after  he  had  robbed  him — a  most 
useless  deed ;  and  what  was  left  after  the  pillage,  he  burned 
and  laid  waste.  If  he  wanted  a  regular  and  permanent  supply 
of  produce,  he  protected  the  peasant — a  practice  from  which 
he  derived  the  most  benefit  by  treating  the  peasant  well ;  he 
used  it  cleverly,  with  moderation  and  prudence. 

So  much,  then,  for  the  internal  working  of  the  government 
of  a  chief  of  a  Norman  band. 

Situated  as  that  personage  was,  we  cannot  hesitate  to 
suppose  that  he  at  once  recognised  a  convenient  instrument, 
and  one  of  just  the  kind  he  wanted,  in  the  feudal  system,  which 
he  found  in  full  vigour  on  Frankish  soil  when  he  settled  there. 
The  points  in  it  which  were  best  suited  to  his  purpose  were  as 
follows  :  in  the  vassal  system  there  was  a  regular  and  per- 
manent method  of  organising  a  military  force,  with  a  certain 
regard  for  independence,  the  right  of  discussion  and  personal 
pride,  because  in  no  case  was  a  man  infeoffed  to  the  suzerain 
by  his  person,  but  by  his  estate  ;  in  the  organisation  of  the 
serfs  or  tenant  cultivators,  which  rendered  the  agricultural 
class  hard-working,  prosperous,  and  productive,  was  a  simple 
and  ail-powerful  organisation  which  worked  smoothly  and 
satisfactorily.  Rolf  grasped  it  so  thoroughly  that  he  made  no 
difficulty  about  changing  his  title  of  king  for  that  of  duke  in 
order  to  enter  into  the  feudal  system,  and  consented,  with  the 
exception  of  the  kissing  of  the  foot,  to  pay  homage  as  a  vassal 


2So  THE  TRIUMPH  OF  THE  SAXONS 

to  Charles  the  Simple,  his  crushed  and  powerless  adversary, 
but  for  all  that  the  chief  of  Frankish  feudalism. 

And,  for  the  very  reason  that  feudalism  provided  those 
two  very  convenient  systems  of  military  organisation  and 
land  cultivation — which  latter  the  Normans  used  to  carry  on 
so  laboriously  in  Scandinavia,  because  they  used  the  decadent 
patriarchal  and  communal  methods — for  that  very  reason  the 
settlement  of  the  new-comers  met  with  unexampled  success. 
They  had,  moreover,  this  advantage  over  those  who  had  been 
longer  established  in  feudalism:  namely, that  they  made  a  general 
settlement  over  a  whole  country  at  one  stroke.  That  gave 
feudalism  in  Normandy  a  more  regular  organisation  than  that 
of  any  other  country,  and  caused  it  later  on  to  be  considered 
by  authorities  on  feudalism  as  the  normal  type  of  the  system, 
whereas  it  was  really  an  exception  on  account  of  its  very 
regularity. 

But  these  improvised  feudal  lords  were  not  smitten  with 
a  love  of  agronomy  all  of  a  sudden.  They  preferred  to  have 
the  harvests  all  ready  reaped  than  to  make  use  of  forced  labour. 
That  is  the  reason  why  the  peasants  in  Normandy  were  eman- 
cipated sooner  than  elsewhere — that  is  to  say,  why  dues  were 
substituted  for  forced  labour— as  we  have  already  seen.1 

Military  expeditions  continued  to  be  the  chief  interest  of  the 
Norman  lords.  So  it  is  not  astonishing  to  find  that  they  are 
almost  the  only  lords  to  answer  the  summons  of  the  first  Capetian 
kings  who  tried  to  meddle  in  the  affairs  of  their  great  vassals 
and  to  make  war  outside  the  domains  directly  dependent  on 
the  crown.  The  Normans  formed  a  good  garrison,  from  which 
plenty  of  soldiers  could  be  drawn.  There  is  no  other  plausible 
explanation  of  that  quite  peculiar  alliance  which  was  regularly 
maintained  between  the  dukes  of  Normandy  and  the  founders 
of  the  third  race  of  kings. 

When  the  kings  of  France  did  not  need  their  services,  the 
Normans  found  means  of  occupying  themselves ;  but  they  did 
not  remain  in  Normandy  precisely  to  enjoy  the  pleasures  of 
country  life  :  they  extended  the  frontiers  of  Normandy  by 
warfare  ;  they  annexed,  or  tried  to  annex,  Maine,  Brittany, 
Anjou,  Poitou.  And  yet  the  Normans  thus  occupied  were  the 
more  sedentary,  for  the  others  went  up  and  down  Spain,  to 

1  See  above,  Chap.  XII  p.  206. 


OVER  NORMAN  FEUDALISM  281 

Italy,  Sicily,  Greece,  and  Syria,  to  perform  their  feats  of  arms. 
They  thus,  by  a  circuitous  sea-passage,  themselves  being  sons 
of  Vikings,  rejoined  their  brothers  the  Varegues,  Odinids  of  the 
same  stock,  who  had  gone  eastwards  by  the  Continent. 

But  neither  Vikings  nor  Varegues  succeeded  in  perpetuating 
their  race  for  very  long,  nor  in  developing  it  by  a  natural  process 
of  expansion  in  any  of  the  numerous  countries  which  they 
paralysed  by  their  exploits.     The  fact  is  that,  after  all,  they 
really  remained  Odinids,  warrior  chiefs,  as  we  have  just  seen. 
The  Normans  disappeared  from  every  place  except  Normandy. 
But  how  was  it  that  Normandy  was  the  exception  ? 
Because  other  Northmen  besides  themselves  came  with  them 
to  Normandy. 

These  others  were  not  Odinids,  and  did  not  feel  inclined  to 
go  round  the  world.  They  went  to  the  nearest  shores,  and 
landed  as  quickly  as  possible,  never  to  stir  from  the  spot  again. 
Most  of  them  simply  came  from  the  neighbouring  Frankish 
lands,  and  they  owed  their  name  of  Norman  to  the  fact  that 
they  were  under  Norman  domination.  Their  language,  the 
vulgar  tongue  of  the  Land  of  Caux,  which  was  never  Scandi- 
navian, but  French,  is  evidence  of  their  French  origin ;  and, 
as  proof,  the  true  Normans,  those  I  mentioned  just  now, 
were  obliged  to  learn  French  against  their  will,  and  to  forget 
Scandinavian. 

The  Norman  peasants  and  farmers  who  were  merely  Franks 
and  Gallo-Romans  had  the  same  advantage  as  their  masters 
the  Norman  warriors  and  vassals  :  namely,  that  they  settled 
afresh  in  a  devastated  land,  where  everything  was  organised  at 
one  stroke.  That  explains  how  it  was  that  they  were  so  well 
distributed  over  the  land,  according  to  the  method  of  the  feudal 
system  and  according  to  the  custom  which  the  Vikings  had  seen 
practised  in  Norway  by  their  seacoast  fishermen.  From  that 
point  of  view,  too,  it  was  a  favourable  opportunity  for  the  crea- 
tion of  what  authorities  on  feudalism  call  a  normal  type.  The 
country  had  been  completely  devastated  :  we  know  how  every- 
one fled  to  Paris  on  the  appearance  of  the  Normans,  and  con- 
temporary accounts  say  that  not  even  the  barking  of  a  dog 
could  be  heard  in  the  vast  solitudes  of  the  Norman  lands. 

As  well  as  Franks  and  Gallo-Romans,  there  came  to  Nor- 
mandy some  Saxon  and  Norwegian  peasants.  These,  for  the 


282  THE  TRIUMPH  OF  THE  SAXONS 

most  part,  attracted  by  the  desire  to  hear  their  own  tongue, 
settled  near  an  ancient  Saxon  colony,  of  but  slight  importance, 
which  was  established  in  the  Pays  Bessin  (land  of  Bayeux), 
a  kind  of  small  Saxon  plain  at  the  base  of  the  gulf  formed  by 
Calvados  and  Manche.  It  was  called  Lower  Normandy.  Saxon 
or  Scandinavian  continued  to  be  spoken  there  for  a  long  time. 
The  first  dukes  of  Normandy  sent  their  infant  sons  there  to 
learn  the  language  of  their  fathers.  But  the  people  there,  like 
those  of  the  Saxon  plain,  were  but  little  disposed  to  tolerate  the 
Odinids,  and  were  very  rebellious  at  the  domination  of  the  dukes 
of  Normandy  ;  they  made  very  little  response  to  their  summons 
to  attend  meetings,  and  almost  always  resisted  their  government. 

The  descendants  of  that  agricultural  population,  which  was 
half  Frankish,  half  true  Norman,  formed  that  Norman  race  which 
became  stable  and  practical  when  it  ceased  to  be  heroic.  Those 
who  rose  to  eminence  from  that  inferior  position  very  soon 
took  the  place  of  the  Odinids,  who  were  not  long  in  disappear- 
ing. The  dukes  of  Normandy  did  not  hang  back.  Their 
family  was  represented  by  legitimate  descendants  for  one 
hundred  and  twenty-three  years,  and  William  the  Bastard 
replaced  all  the  members  of  his  family  on  the  father's  side,  on 
the  ducal  side,  by  the  members  of  the  family  of  his  mother, 
the  washerwoman,  the  daughter  of  the  tanner  of  Falaise.  And 
this  duchy  of  Normandy,  which  had  been  the  protector  of 
the  Capetians,  was  the  first  fief  to  be  confiscated  by 
them.  But  the  Norman  agricultural  population  constituted 
that  "  land  of  wisdom  "  (a  name  given  to  Normandy),  which 
alone  perpetuated  the  name  of  Normans  in  the  world,  quite 
apart  from  the  traditions  of  the  famous  Norman  warriors. 

All  that  we  have  said  of  the  Normans  as  to  their  devotion 
to  warlike  enterprises  applies  directly  to  their  conquest  of 
England  :  it  was  one  of  their  military  adventures,  one  of  the 
results  of  the  need  they  felt  for  fighting  and  for  leading  an 
active  life.  I  will  pass  over  the  circumstantial  particulars, 
which  merely  form  the  history  of  the  diplomacy  used  on  that 
occasion.  To  explain  the  conquest  of  England  by  the  oppor- 
tunities used,  or  rather  made,  by  William  the  Conqueror,  is  to 
explain  the  new  German  Empire  by  the  candidature  of  the  Prince 
of  Hohenzollern  for  the  throne  of  Spain.  The  Normans  con- 
quered England  just  as  they  conquered  at  the  same  time 


OVER  NORMAN  FEUDALISM  283 

Maine,  Brittany,  Anjou,  Poitou,  Italy,  and  Spain  ;   and  they 
lost  England  just  as  they  lost  the  rest. 

William  had  seen  Great  Britain  governed,  or  rather  exploited, 
by  the  Danish  kings.  On  their  disappearance,  he  thought 
that  he  could  do  the  same  thing,  only  better.  The  absence  of 
any  descendant  of  Edward  the  Confessor  was  a  fact  of  little 
significance,  seeing  that  Saxon  royalt}^  was  elective  in  England, 
and  that,  moreover,  there  were  still  some  descendants  of  Cerdic 
left.  But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  Saxons  elected  Harold, 
who  seemed  to  them  to  promise  to  be  a  beter  king  than  any  of 
the  descendants  of  Cerdic.  He  was  the  son  of  that  same  Godwin 
who  had  done  such  good  service  in  the  expulsion  of  the  Danes, 
begun  by  Hown.  But  when  William  had  shown  his  military 
superiority  at  Hastings,  and  Harold  had  been  killed  in  the 
battle,  it  did  not  seem  at  all  improbable  that  the  Saxons  would 
in  practice  accept  a  Norman  king  as  they  had  accepted  a  Danish 
king.  In  short,  that  was  what  immediately  happened,  but  it 
took  place  tacitly,  and  rather  by  a  process  of  laisser-faire  than 
by  a  formal  decision  of  the  Saxon  people.  Nevertheless,  the 
deed  was  done.  William  was  able  to  get  himself  crowned, 
though  in  a  somewhat  tumultuous  manner,  at  London,  directly 
after  the  Battle  of  Hastings. 

William  did  not  bring  in  his  train  a  colony  of  agriculturists, 
but  a  band  of  soldiers  picked  up  at  random  and  composed 
largely  of  very  inferior  men.  But  the  band  was  formed  in 
accordance  with  the  feudal  system  of  military  service.  Each 
man  claimed  the  right  of  being  provided  with  a  fief,  but  was  far 
from  pretending  to  cultivate  it  with  his  own  hands.  Thus  the 
system  by  which  England  was  occupied  consisted  in  granting 
feudal  rights  to  the  conquerors — that  is,  the  right  of  collecting 
dues  from  lands  which  the  Saxons,  formerly  free-holders,  then 
held  as  rent-payers.  Apart  from  the  feudal  rent,  the  new  lords 
claimed  the  right  of  commanding  forced  labour  at  will.  In 
short,  the  Saxon  remained  a  farmer,  but  was  no  longer  considered 
a  landowner  ;  he  was  liable  to  taxation,  and  to  any  amount  of 
forced  labour  the  lord  chose  to  exact.  His  lands  were  even 
supposed  not  to  pass  to  his  descendants  except  at  the  good 
pleasure  of  the  feudal  lord.  These,  then,  were  the  legal  insti- 
tutions, and,  more  especially,  the  covetous  claims  of  that  mixed 
body  of  Normans,  or  so-called  Normans. 


284  THE  TRIUMPH  OF  THE  SAXONS 

But  the  Saxon  people,  as  individuals,  opposed  this  out- 
rageous exploitation  with  all  their  might,  claimed  the  right  of 
keeping  their  property  for  their  descendants,  and  of  paying 
only  what  they  could  reasonably  pay,  and  getting  compensation 
for  the  forced  labour  they  contributed.  When  they  had  reduced 
feudal  taxation  in  this  manner,  they  further  claimed  the  right 
of  regulating  their  national  affairs  according  to  the  old  national 
customs,  and  even  of  administering  justice  impartially,  in  accord- 
ance with  their  custom,  to  those  against  whom  the  Normans 
brought  accusations.  That  was  the  way  in  which  they  under- 
stood the  conquest. 

It  was  neither  more  nor  less  than  an  open  conflict. 

It  took  two  forms  :  that  of  resistance  made  by  individuals 
by  every  possible  means,  including  armed  resistance  and  some- 
times assassination ;  and  that  of  general  resistance  by  public 
risings,  which  took  place  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  and  of 
resistance  authorised  by  charters  obtained  from  the  Norman 
kings,  which  were  almost  immediately  violated  by  them. 

Owing  to  this  permanent  state  of  conflict,  the  Normans  were 
kept  in  the  position  of  strangers  in  England,  and  were  cut  off 
from  all  ordinary  intercourse  with  the  Saxons.  They  remained 
armed  from  top  to  toe,  only  venturing  out  with  precaution, 
and  shut  themselves  up  in  castles  which  they  had  built  to  secure 
their  persons  against  the  attempts  of  the  people.  Thence  it 
came  about  that  they  preserved  their  language,  and  the  Saxons 
theirs.  And  the  two  peoples  lived  side  by  side,  instead  of 
intermingling  freely. 

It  was  imperative  for  the  Normans  to  remain  united  in  this 
state  of  siege.  The  feudal  system  provided  them  with  a  ready- 
made  organisation  for  that  purpose.  So  the  Saxons  were  wont 
to  say  that  the  Normans  kept  as  close  together  "  as  the  scales 
of  a  tortoise."  The  superiority  of  the  Normans  over  the  Danes 
consisted  in  their  employment  of  the  feudal  military  organi- 
sation which  they  had  borrowed  from  France  before  they 
attacked  England.  And  that  is  why  I  said  that  the  Norman 
conquest  was  only  a  perfected  form  of  the  Danish  invasion. 
All  the  points  we  have  just  enumerated  make  this  clear. 

The  vital  necessity  of  maintaining  a  strict  feudal  union 
between  the  Normans  constituted  the  power  of  the  Norman 
king,  who,  in  England,  kept  his  vassals  in  hand  like  no  other 


OVER  NORMAN  FEUDALISM  285 

suzerain  in  the  world.  He  was,  in  fact,  a  potentate.  He 
treated  his  English  vassals  in  a  way  which  his  continental 
vassals  would  not  have  stood  for  a  moment. 

As  long  as  the  Norman  king  was  prudent  enough  only  to 
attack  such  and  such  vassals  one  by  one,  when  he  wanted  to 
manage  them,  matters  went  smoothly.  He  was  supported  by 
the  rest,  by  the  majority  of  the  vassals,  to  whom  he  of  course 
distributed  the  spoils  of  those  he  got  rid  of.  But  when  the 
bad  government,  which  was  the  necessary  result,  in  the  long- 
run,  of  the  spirit  of  adventure  of  the  Norman  sovereigns,  forced 
them  to  attempt,  rash  though  it  was,  to  bring  pressure  to  bear 
upon  all  the  nobility  at  once,  in  order  to  extort  exorbitant 
tribute  from  them  under  every  form,  then  the  entire  nobility 
realised  the  king's  tyranny  at  the  same  moment,  was  no  longer 
divided  against  itself,  and  spontaneously  leagued  itself  against 
a  completely  deserted  king. 

But  the  nobles  would  have  been  able  to  effect  nothing 
towards  their  emancipation  from  the  royal  tyranny,  if  the 
Saxon  population,  which  surrounded  them  and  swamped  them, 
so  to  speak,  on  every  side  throughout  the  length  and  breadth 
of  the  kingdom,  had  been  set  against  them  while  they  were 
rising  against  the  sovereign.  There  was  only  one  step  possible 
for  the  Norman  lords  :  consequently  they  took  it  with  one 
accord.  They  openly  and  radically  changed  their  position, 
and,  to  a  man,  went  over  to  the  side  of  the  Saxon  people.  They 
made  the  king  sign  a  charter  in  which  they  demanded  that 
the  Common  Law,  the  laws  of  good  King  Edward,  should  be 
recognised  as  well  as  the  independence  of  the  nobles  and  their 
guarantees  against  the  king.  That  was  the  famous  Magna  Carta. 

To  all  appearance,  the  Normans  were  beginning  to  take  the 
Saxon  people  under  their  protection.  In  reality,  the  Normans 
were  rallying  to  the  Saxon  people,  even  seeking  their  strength 
to  supply  their  own  weakness,  and  were  organising  their  defence 
with  their  aid. 

Thus  the  Saxon  people  remained  the  stronger  :  it  had 
won  the  day. 

The  Normans  established  a  system  by  which  they  might 
lawfully  protect  themselves  against  the  king's  power  :  they 
instituted  a  council  of  twenty-five  lords,  and  assemblies  of 
nobles  and  ecclesiastics  to  which  the  Saxons  were  allowed  to 


286  THE  TRIUMPH  OF  THE  SAXONS 

send  representatives,  but  only  when  the  question  of  subsidies 
was  being  discussed.  That  was  the  beginning  of  the  parliament. 

But  the  Saxons  placed  but  little  reliance  upon  this  system, 
in  which  they  had  no  part.  On  each  occasion  they  demanded 
anew  the  practical  or  theoretical  recognition  of  the  laws  of 
King  Edward — that  is  to  say,  of  the  absolute  security  of  the 
estate  against  being  seized  in  payment  of  taxes  and  alleged 
debts,  of  the  inviolability  of  persons,  and  of  the  local  administra- 
tion of  justice  by  non-officials,  all  of  which,  when  drawn  up  in 
due  form,  practically  represented  the  whole  of  the  English 
constitution,  everything  essential  to  the  Anglo-Saxon  type, 
everything  which  formed  the  basis  of  its  strength. 

Every  time  the  people  had  to  make  serious  complaints 
about  these  points,  they  rose  en  masse,  peaceably,  and  without 
giving  way  to  violence  under  any  provocation,  and  did  not 
return  home  until  they  had  obtained  a  promise  that  their 
customs  would  be  respected.  Tacitus'  type  of  Saxon  seems  to 
reappear  before  us,  almost  feature  for  feature,  in  this  people 
which  masters  its  anger  when  irritated,  and  does  not  resort 
to  blows  when  it  is  roused,  even  when  it  is  armed  and  is  the 
stronger. 

In  sheltering  themselves  behind  this  method  of  procedure 
on  the  part  of  the  Saxon  people,  the  Norman  nobles  put  their 
necks  beneath  its  yoke.  The  people  behaved  towards  the 
nobles  in  the  same  way  as  it  had  always  behaved  towards 
national  leaders  :  it  allowed  them  to  manage  affairs  so  long  as 
it  saw  some  good  in  their  management,  or,  at  any  rate,  not 
too  much  harm.  It  withdrew  its  support,  and  devised  means 
of  bringing  things  to  a  crisis,  when  necessity  demanded  it. 

Thus,  a  little  more  than  a  century  and  a  half  after  the 
beginning  of  that  formidable  feudal  domination,  the  Saxon 
people  had  regained  their  position  and  re-established  self- 
government  under  the  old  form  which  they  had  naturally  and 
spontaneously  created.  They  were  again  in  their  former 
condition.  They  had  absorbed  the  relatively  small  number 
of  influential  Norman  nobles.  Saxons,  Angles,  and  Normans 
were  really  all  Saxons,  and  no  longer  recognised  anything  but 
the  Saxon  language,  the  Common  Law,  the  laws  of  good  King 
Edward.  We  shall  presently  examine  this  in  detail,  and  follow 
the  sequence  of  facts  relating  to  it. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 
THE  COMMUNAL  MOVEMENT  IN  FRANCE 

UP  to  this  point  in  our  history  of  the  particularist  races 
we  have  found  that  the  means  of  living  have  been  supplied 
by  only  two  forms  of  labour:  seacoast  fishing,  with  an  elementary 
kind  of  agriculture  on  the  Norwegian  coast ;  and  an  improved 
kind  of  agriculture,  although  the  methods  used  are  simple, 
in  the  territory  of  the  Saxons,  Franks,  and  Anglo-Saxons. 

Now,  we  know  that  the  natural  result  of  the  development 
of  agriculture  is  to  bring  about  the  development  of  manu- 
facture after  a  certain  time. 

Accordingly,  we  shall  find  that  in  the  lands  where  improved 
methods  of  agriculture  are  used,  the  particularists  come  into 
contact  with  industrial  work,  which  goes  on  side  by  side  with 
that  of  agriculture. 

In  the  first  period  of  its  development,  a  period  which  is 
prolonged  into  modern  times,  manufacture,  among  particu- 
larist peoples  as  well  as  among  others,  is  carried  on  in  the 
small  workshop,  where  the  artisan  works  alone  or  with  a  small 
number  of  helpers.  The  next  point,  then,  that  we  are  going  to 
investigate  in  the  course  of  our  history  is  the  development  of 
the  particularist  form  of  society  in  the  period  when  industry  was 
in  the  ascendant,  but  was  restricted  to  the  small  workshop. 

This  point  brings  us  back  to  the  Franks. 

We  left  them  at  the  moment  when  the  emancipation  of  the 
serfs,  after  the  complete  triumph  of  feudalism  over  the  Mero- 
vingians, attested  and  still  further  promoted  the  increase  of 
the  agricultural  wealth  of  estates  organised  on  the  Frankish 
system.  The  fact  that  it  was  at  that  very  time  that  an  in- 
dustrial  population  appeared  in  France,  according  to  the  evi- 
dence of  history,  is  what  we  should  expect,  but  it  is  full  of 
interest. 


288  THE  COMMUNAL  MOVEMENT  IN  FRANCE 

By  an  industrial  population  we  mean  a  population  which 
finds  that  it  can  make  enough  profit  by  manufacture  to  practise 
it  exclusively,  or  almost  exclusively,  as  its  means  of  livelihood. 
The  appearance  of  a  population  of  this  kind  is  the  clearest 
proof  of  the  existence  of  causes  which  tend  to  the  increase  of 
manufacture.  So  far  as  we  have  seen,  manufacture  in  France 
was  kept,  like  everything  else,  shut  up  within  the  estate.  The 
ordinary  "  peasants  "  manufactured  for  the  domain  and  in 
the  domain  everything  necessary  for  it :  they  combined  manu- 
facture with  agriculture.  But  in  the  twelfth  century  increasing 
aggregations  of  people  were  formed,  who  devoted  themselves 
exclusively  to  manufacture,  and  became  completely  separated 
from  the  domain.  This  is  known  in  history  under  the  striking 
name  of  the  Communal  Movement. 

There  is  nothing  astonishing  in  the  fact  that,  of  all 
the  particularist  peoples,  the  Franks  were  the  first  to 
start  this  movement.  It  was  with  them  that  high  farm- 
ing on  the  large  estate  had  developed  most,  —  and  we 
have  already  given  the  reasons  why, — consequently,  it  was 
with  them  that  manufacture  necessarily  made  its  first 
start.1 

The  society  of  the  Franks  was  based  so  exclusively  on  the 
rural  domain  that  historians  are  very  much  exercised  to  know 
what  became  of  the  towns  when  the  triumph  of  feudalism 
was  at  its  height.  However,  we  shall  try  to  give  some  account 
of  them. 

Before  the  arrival  of  the  Franks  in  Gaul,  the  majority  of 
the  towns  of  a  certain  importance  had  been  placed  by  the 
Roman  emperors  of  the  decadence  under  the  management 
of  the  Curia,  that  ill-starred  institution.  They  were  called 
municipes. 

To  all  appearance,  they  were  modelled  after  the  system  of 
the  internal  government  of  Ancient  Rome.  The  civic  landed 
proprietors  were  called  patricians  :  to  have  a  right  to  that  title 
it  was  enough  to  possess  25  jugera  (720,000  square  feet)  of  land 
in  the  territory  which  was  dependent  on  the  city  and  stretched 
for  some  distance  round  it.  This  class  governed  the  rest  of 
the  inhabitants,  who  figured  as  plebeians.  This  patrician 
government — modest,  to  be  sure,  but  boasting,  nevertheless,  a 

1  Among  others,  see  above,  Chap.  VIII.  pp.  133,  144;  Chap.  IX.  p.  149. 


THE  COMMUNAL  MOVEMENT  IN  FRANCE    289 

fair  number  of  large,  and  even  very  large  landowners — was 
called  the  Curia.  Those  who  formed  part  of  it  were  called 
curials. 

A  great  council,  attended  by  large  numbers,  was  formed 
from  among  them  :  the  Council  of  the  Decurions.  It  was  to 
the  curials  what  the  Senate  was  to  the  patricians. 

Lastly,  the  executive  was  intrusted  to  a  few  members  of 
this  council,  usually  two,  who  bore  the  name  of  duumvirs,  and 
played  the  part  of  consuls. 

That  is,  roughly,  the  system  of  government. 

Such  it  was  to  all  appearance,  at  least.  But  we  must  see 
what  it  was  in  reality. 

The  great  duty  of  this  administration  was  not  so  much  to 
govern  in  the  interests  of  the  municipality  as  to  collect  the 
taxes  for  the  emperor.  And— mark  this  well — the  curials, 
all  and  each,  had  to  answer  with  their  private  fortunes  for  the 
payment  of  the  full  amount  of  the  tax  to  be  contributed  by 
the  town  and  its  territory.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  the  chief 
desire  of  the  curials  was  to  get  rid  of  their  office,  since,  owing 
to  hard  times,  the  difficulties  they  experienced  more  than 
counterbalanced  the  honours  that  were  attached  to  their 
position.  But  you  may  rest  well  assured  that  they  were 
forbidden  to  do  so.  The  imperial  decrees  bound  them  to  the 
Curia  as  they  bound  the  Roman  cultivators  to  the  grants  of 
land — in  the  one  case  to  be  answerable  for  the  taxes,  in  the 
other  to  pay  them.1  When  the  central  power  in  a  society 
has  exhausted  and  withered  everything,  it  still  believes  that 
the  evil  can  be  remedied  by  making  obligatory  what  can  no 
longer  go  on  of  itself.  The  unfortunate  curials  were  so  anxious 
to  free  themselves  from  this  kind  of  torture,  that  they  decided 
to  flee  and  abandon  their  property.  They  were  no  more  allowed 
to  do  that  than  were  the  cultivators  ;  they  were  brought  back, 
and  were  made  to  pay  a  fine  in  addition.  They  conceived 
the  idea  of  enlisting  in  the  army  or  of  entering  the  Church, 
because  the  soldier  and  the  churchman  were  exempted  from 
the  duties  of  curial.  Again  they  were  forbidden. 

The  only  mark  of  pity  shown  by  the  emperors  to  the 
municipes — that  is,  to  the  curials  who  were  responsible  for  them 
— was  that  they  granted  them  the  power  of  choosing  a  defender, 

1  See  above,  Chap.  VIII.  pp.  136,  137. 
19 


2QO  THE  COMMUNAL  MOVEMENT  IN  FRANCE 

who  was  officially  permitted  to  appeal  directly  to  the  imperial 
power  against  the  excessively  rigorous  action  employed  by  the 
praetor  or  any  other  provincial  governor  in  pursuing  the  curials 
for  the  payment  of  the  tax.  The  curials  usually  chose  the 
bishop  of  the  place  for  this  difficult  post :  the  bishoprics  were, 
of  course,  established  in  the  chief  Roman  towns. 

The  municipal  duties  intrusted  to  the  inhabitants  possessing 
more  than  twenty-five  jugera  of  land  are  sufficient  evidence 
that  the  towns  were,  above  all,  places  inhabited  by  rural  land- 
owners. Besides,  we  have  already  seen  that  under  the  Roman 
and  Gallo-Roman  system  of  government  the  owners  of  estates 
usually  lived  in  the  towns.1  In  towns  which  were  not  naturally 
convenient  for  commerce,  owing  to  their  peculiar  situation, 
there  were  very  few  merchants,  and  even  very  few  manufac- 
turers. The  reason  was  that  the  landowners,  the  principal 
inhabitants,  with  their  following  of  dependents,  relied  for  their 
living  upon  the  estates  which  they  possessed  in  the  outskirts 
of  the  town.  The  troops  of  slaves  whom  they  maintained  on 
their  lands  furnished  them  not  only  with  the  produce  of  agri- 
culture, but  with  manufactured  articles  which  a  portion  of  the 
slaves  made  in  country  workshops,  where  they  were  organised, 
directed,  supervised,  and  goaded  on  by  the  representative  of  the 
master.  The  overplus  of  the  manufacture  was  sold  for  the 
landowners'  profit  by  intermediaries,  who  on  occasion  concealed 
his  name  in  order  that  he  might  have  the  greater  honour  of  being 
thought  a  man  of  liberal  means.  More  than  one  country  could 
be  quoted  at  the  present  day — Corsica,  for  example — where 
the  rural  landowners  live  in  a  similar  way  in  town  on  the  produce 
of  their  estates,  and  are  more  or  less  openly  the  chief  traders. 

Nevertheless,  in  those  Roman  municipes  which  were  the 
best  situated  for  commerce  there  was  a  considerable  population 
of  merchants  and  professional  manufacturers.  There  were 
some  even  who  formed  unions.  These  people  were  not 
owners  of  landed  property,  but  for  all  that  they  were  not  free 
from  taxation  :  their  profession  was  taxed.  This  kind  of 
taxation  was  called  Chrysargyre — that  is  to  say,  "  gold  and 
silver  " — because  it  was  not  collected  in  the  form  of  merchan- 
dise, but  in  the  form  of  money  from  the  merchant's  till.  It  was 
the  obvious  thing  to  make  those  persons  who  were  liable  to  the 
1  See  above,^Chap.  VIII.  p.  134. 


THE  COMMUNAL  MOVEMENT  IN  FRANCE  291 

tax  responsible  for  each  other  before  the  Treasury,  just  as  had 
been  done  in  the  case  of  the  owners  of  landed  property.  Pressure 
was  put  upon  them  to  form  trade  corporations,  so  that  the 
people  of  the  same  trade  should  be  responsible  for  each  other 
for  the  whole  tax  levied  on  the  trade.  And,  what  is  more, 
the  corporations  were  made  conjointly  liable,  and  had  to  make 
up  each  other's  deficits.  History  relates  that  some  wretched 
individuals  were  obliged  to  sell  their  children  in  order  to  pay 
this  so-called  Chrysargyre. 

In  short,  the  municipes  of  the  period  before  the  invasion 
of  the  barbarians  were  made  up  of  an  obligatory  corporation 
of  landed  proprietors  and  of  enforced  and  conjointly  liable 
corporations  of  people  engaged  in  commerce  and  in  trade.  And 
the  object  of  these  obligatory  corporations  was  to  make  the 
members  of  them  responsible  for  each  other  for  the  payment 
of  the  taxes. 

Such  was  the  organisation  of  the  Gallo-Roman  towns  of  the 
decadence. 

One  can  imagine  the  sigh  of  relief  which  escaped  from  these 
gehennas  when  the  barbarians  arrived  and  put  the  representa- 
tives of  the  emperor  to  flight  before  them. 

In  Gaul,  the  Merovingian  invaders,  who  were  at  first  more 
occupied  in  pursuing  their  conquest  than  in  organising  it,  gave 
no  thought  to  the  administration  of  the  towns,  but  merely 
wanted  to  extort  from  them  a  ransom,  or,  if  they  resisted, 
to  plunder  them.  During  this  period  of  invasion,  the  towns, 
abandoned  to  their  own  resources,  directed  their  affairs  as 
best  they  could.  They  were  usually  managed  by  the  defender, 
ordinarily  the  bishop,  as  I  said  before,  who,  because  of  the  con- 
fidence he  enjoyed,  was  chosen  for  that  position  by  the  public, 
and  even  by  popular  election.  Time  after  time  we  read  of  the 
bishop  acting  as  intermediary  between  the  town  and  the 
barbarians.  It  was  not  of  much  importance  whether  he  was 
given  the  title  of  defender  or  not :  under  such  critical  circum- 
stances that  duty  belonged  to  the  most  capable  as  well  as  to 
the  most  popular  man.  The  person  thus  designated  by  force 
of  circumstances  was  surrounded  by  the  old  curials,  now 
freed  from  their  legal  servitude  by  the  retreat  of  the  Roman 
administration,  but  summoned  by  necessity  and  common 
consent  to  perform  the  duties  of  magistrates,  to  judge  disputes 


292    THE  COMMUNAL  MOVEMENT  IN  FRANCE 

or  crimes,  or  to  busy  themselves  in  matters  of  public  interest. 
It  was,  in  short,  a  government  de  facto  in  the  hands  of  men  who 
were  naturally  fitted  to  wield  authority,  and,  above  all,  it 
was  carried  on  in  a  friendly  manner. 

Something  of  the  same  sort  occurred  thirty  years  ago  in 
France  in  the  first  days  of  the  German  occupation,  when  the 
representatives  of  the  central  power  had  withdrawn  and  the 
German  officials  had  not  yet  been  able  to  take  their  place. 
The  local  government  which  springs  up  spontaneously  in  such 
cases  makes  use  of  earlier  customs  and  traditional  forms,  but 
it  adapts  them  freely  to  the  circumstances. 

Such  was  the  organisation  of  the  Gallo-Roman  towns  during 
the  invasion. 

After  the  invasion,  when  order  was  re-established,  the  Franks 
for  the  most  part  settled  on  estates,  where  they  organised  the 
population  in  their  peculiar  manner,  as  we  already  know, 
where  they  permanently  resided,  and  tried  to  make  themselves 
independent  of  public  authorities.  They  thus  kept  very  much 
aloof  from  the  towns.  The  towns  were  left  to  the  Merovingians, 
who  placed  men  of  their  truste  in  them  as  annually  appointed 
functionaries.  Their  custom  was  to  send  a  person  of  high  rank, 
a  member  of  their  suite  bearing  the  title  of  count,  which  was 
Germanic  as  much  as  Roman,  to  the  principal  town  in  a 
"  country  " — that  is  to  say,  in  a  small  district — and  to  allow  him 
to  choose  the  subordinates  who  were  to  go  to  the  secondary 
towns  in  the  neighbourhood.  But  it  was  no  duty  of  the  count 
to  reorganise  or  replace  either  by  his  own  person  or  that  of 
his  agents  the  municipal  administration  which  we  have  just 
seen  groping  its  way  forward  in  the  chaos  of  the  invasion. 
He  was  simply  charged  to  collect  the  old  imperial  taxes  for  the 
Merovingians.  If  it  is  true  that  he  performed  other  duties 
as  well,  they  were  those  in  which  the  central  authority  was 
interested,  such  as  the  enrolment  of  troops,  the  absolute  main- 
tenance of  public  peace,  the  duty  of  presiding  at,  of  procuring 
someone  to  preside  at,  or  of  sanctioning  the  trial  of  criminals. 
He  did  not  serve  the  city  but  the  Merovingian. 

Taxes  were,  at  that  time,  levied  on  each  tax-payer,  who  was 
only  responsible  for  himself  personally  and  not  for  anyone  else. 
The  tax-collecting  was  supervised  by  the  count,  and  no  longer 
by  the  urban  administration.  But  the  count  sometimes  appealed 


THE  COMMUNAL  MOVEMENT  IN  FRANCE    293 

to  usurers,  who  advanced  a  round  sum  to  cover  the  taxes,  and 
exercised  the  privilege  of  procuring  the  money  to  refund  them- 
selves from  the  individual  tax-payers.  The  taxes  of  each 
individual  were  assessed  according  to  the  last  list  drawn  up 
under  the  empire. 

We  are  here  talking  of  the  land  tax,  which  it  was  formerly 
the  duty  of  the  curials  to  collect,  and  for  which  they  were 
conjointly  responsible.  As  for  the  Chrysargyre,  it  had  dis- 
appeared in  the  confusion,  together  with  all  regular  commerce 
and  manufacture.  Commerce  was  no  more  than  an  enterprise 
of  bold  adventurers,  and  manufacture  was  more  than  ever 
restricted  to  the  domains. 

Such  was  the  condition  of  the  Merovingian  towns. 

The  towns  of  Southern  Gaul  remained  almost  exactly  in 
that  condition.  The  feudal  organisation,  which  was  Frankish 
and  not  Merovingian,  only  penetrated  a  little  way  into  that 
region.  The  Franks  did  not  travel  as  quickly  as  the  Mero- 
vingians, and  they  spread  mainly  towards  the  north.  The 
Gallo-Roman  landowners  of  the  south,  both  large  and  small, 
continued  to  live  in  the  towns  for  the  greater  part  of  the  year, 
and  so  kept  up  their  importance.  The  count  was  allowed  to 
collect  the  taxes  on  their  estates  without  very  much  resistance, 
on  condition  that  he  assessed  them  according  to  the  ancient 
imperial  list ;  if  not,  there  were  revolts  and  bloody  quarrels 
between  himself  and  the  population.  As  the  central  power — 
which  was  established  in  the  north,  at  Paris,  Soissons,  Metz, 
Orleans — was  a  long  way  off,  the  count  kept  the  money  for 
himself  under  the  pretext  that  the  expenses  of  his  adminis- 
tration absorbed  the  receipts.  There  were  no  Frankish  or 
Francicised  landowners  in  the  country  who  could  rival  his 
authority.  So  he  lived  more  or  less  contentedly,  and  the 
inhabitants  kept  fairly  quiet  so  long  as  their  taxes  were  not 
increased:  in  fact,  the  Merovingians,  whom  the  Frankish  colonists 
had  not  followed  into  the  south,  did  not  introduce  new  ways 
of  getting  rich  into  that  country. 

Thus  it  came  about  that  in  Southern  France  the  Merovingian 
urban  organisation  still  went  on,  and  the  towns  did  not  break 
with  the  tradition  of  the  imperial  government,  except  in  the 
case  of  the  modifications  we  mentioned  just  now,  which  were, 
however,  of  considerable  importance. 


294  THE  COMMUNAL  MOVEMENT  IN  FRANCE 

In  the  north  it  was  a  different  thing. 

There  the  inhabitants  of  the  town,  the  landed  proprietors, 
found  means  of  escaping  the  taxation  and  the  arbitrary  power 
of  the  count  by  fictitiously  ceding  their  property  to  some 
powerful  Frankish  landowner  who  was  established  in  the 
country,  and  was  provided  with  immunities,  and  who  made 
the  property  over  to  them  again  under  the  title  of  fief.  They 
left  the  town  and  settled  near  their  protector,  and.  like  him, 
began  to  live  on  their  own  estates,  which  were  thus,  so  to  speak, 
deprived  of  their  mark  of  ownership.  The  towns  became 
empty,  and  nothing  was  left  to  be  taxed  by  the  count  except 
town  property,  which  was  singularly  neglected,  and  went  from 
bad  to  worse.  That  was  the  end  of  towns  in  the  north.  They 
were  reduced  to  their  lowest  terms,  so  much  so  that  the  counts 
themselves  were  obliged  to  live  upon  the  revenues  of  some 
estate  which  had  been  confiscated  by  one  of  the  Merovingians. 

The  anti-urban  revolution  introduced  by  the  Franks  was 
accomplished. 

The  inhabitants  who  lingered  on  in  the  towns  were  of  too 
slight  importance,  and  too  few,  to  carry  on  any  sort  of  municipal 
administration  themselves,  to  maintain  any  government  or 
any  kind  of  organisation  for  public  purposes,  such  as  the  settle- 
ment of  disputes,  which  are  sure  to  spring  up  in  every  aggre- 
gation of  men.  The  count,  as  we  have  said,  was  not  supposed 
to  undertake  these  matters,  but  he  found  he  was  the  only  person 
to  do  it.  He  could  manage  everything  to  his  own  liking. 

Charlemagne,  however,  attempted  to  introduce  some  kind 
of  order  into  affairs.  He  decreed  that  his  missi  dominici  should 
come  to  an  agreement  with  the  count  and  the  inhabitants  as  to 
the  choice  of  those  to  whom  the  political  administration  and 
the  petty  trials  in  the  town  should  be  intrusted.  The  municipal 
magistrates  appointed  by  this  triple  council  were  called  Scdbini, 
from  the  Saxon  word  scapene,  which  means  to  command  and 
to  judge.  Thence  came  the  word  echevin  (sheriff). 

Such  was  the  organisation  of  the  Carlovingian  towns. 

We  can  see  how  it  was  that  this  system  did  not  last  long, 
but  disappeared  with  Charlemagne  and  his  missi  dominici. 
The  count  soon  found  he  was  left  to  manage  affairs  alone  with 
the  townspeople.  He  sent  them  sheriffs  of  his  own  choosing, 
who  were  simply  his  representatives.  He  placed  the  inhabitants 


THE  COMMUNAL  MOVEMENT  IN  FRANCE    295 

of  the  town  on  the  same  footing  as  those  on  the  estates  with 
which  the  king  had  endowed  him,  and  upon  which  he  lived 
since  the  immunities  of  the  Frankish  landowners  had  reduced 
the  taxes  to  nothing.  He  placed  the  last  remaining  inhabitants 
of  the  town  on  a  par  with  the  people  on  his  lands  ;  he  considered 
them  as  his  men,  he  made  them  contribute  forced  labour  or 
pay  rent  for  their  property  in  the  town,  forbade  them  to  leave 
it  without  his  consent,  to  assign  it  without  paying  him  some 
dues,  to  marry  without  his  authorisation — in  a  word,  he  estab- 
lished and  exercised  over  them  the  private  and  public  rights 
of  a  Frankish  lord :  he  made  them  into  serfs  pure  and 
simple. 

The  ecclesiastics,  however,  who  formed  a  certain  part  of  the 
urban  population,  and  the  vassals  and  knights  who  happened 
to  have  a  house  in  town — a  very  rare  occurrence — and  who 
sometimes  came  to  live  there,  needless  to  say,  escaped  this 
transformation.  In  the  town  as  well  as  outside  it  they  pre- 
served the  immunities  belonging  to  their  rank.  So  they  paid 
no  dues  and  were  subject  to  none  of  the  obligations  I  have 
just  mentioned  which  usually  accompanied  the  possession  of 
any  property  in  a  town. 

Those  who  paid  dues  and  were  subject  to  the  obligations 
were  generally  called  bourgeois.  They  were  none  the  less 
exactly  like  villeins  or  hinds,  whose  name  they  were  occasionally 
given.  They  were  serfs. 

At  the  same  time  as  these  towns  were  decaying  others  were 
being  created,  but  they  were  organised  on  exactly  the  same 
model.  They  were,  for  example,  aggregations  of  houses,  which 
appeared  round  some  abbey  that  had  become  a  haunt  of  pilgrims, 
and  consequently  a  market-place. 

Some  of  the  lords,  both  ecclesiastics  and  laymen,  at  this  time 
conceived  the  idea  of  peopling  certain  parts  of  their  estates, 
which  they  found  some  difficulty  in  filling,  by  granting  anyone 
who  would  come  and  live  there  exemption  from  the  tasks  or 
obligations  of  serfdom.  Such  an  attraction  brought  a  goodly 
number  of  people.  The  new  settlements  were  called  miles 
neuves  (new  towns) — that  is  to  say,  villas  or  villages.  But  some 
of  them  developed  and  became  real  towns.  Some  have  lasted 
till  modern  times,  and  still  bear  their  ancient  name  of 
Villeneuve.  The  point  to  be  noted  is  that,  at  the  start,  they 


296    THE  COMMUNAL  MOVEMENT  IN  FRANCE 

differed  from  the  decadent  towns,  not  in  their  method  of  admin- 
istration but  in  being  exempted  from  servile  labour. 

In  short,  the  towns  were  at  that  time  completely  subject 
to  the  feudal  system.  They  did  not  escape  from  it  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  the  count,  or  the  ordinary  lord,  had  to  appoint 
a  few  officials  to  preserve  order  in  the  midst  of  their  increasing 
throng  of  inhabitants.  These  officials  were  under  the  feudal 
system,  held  their  posts  in  fief,  with  hereditary  and  trans- 
ferable rights,  subject  to  the  agreement  of  the  lord.  They 
continued,  however,  to  be  called  sheriffs,  but  they  were  also 
given  the  more  thoroughly  feudal  name  of  peers.  They  had 
charge  of  the  municipal  administration,  the  ordinary  urban 
courts  of  law,  and  certain  matters  of  common  interest  to  the 
townsfolk.  The  fees  or  "  benefits "  which  they  received  in 
payment  of  the  discharge  of  the  duties  of  their  fiefs  were 
deducted  from  the  fines  they  collected  as  guardians  of  the 
public  peace  or  as  judges,  and  from  the  taxes  paid  by  the  people 
towards  the  objects  of  public  interest  with  which  they  were 
concerned. 

Such  was  the  organisation  of  the  feudal  towns. 
And  here  we  must  observe  the  appearance  of  a  curious  and 
very  significant  phenomenon.  It  confirms  the  law  we  deduced 
from  that  sequence  of  facts  connected  with  the  development 
of  the  particularist  form  of  society  which  we  have  been  following 
so  closely.  The  phenomenon  is  this  :  the  extraordinary  differ- 
ence there  is  between  the  domain  and  the  small  workshop  from 
the  point  of  view  of  emancipation. 

On  the  domain  the  serfs  were  emancipated  in  proportion 
as  their  labour  increased  the  produce  of  their  holding  :  when 
they  grew  rich  they  redeemed  themselves  from  forced  labour. 
The  rent  they  paid  in  the  place  of  forced  labour  remained 
invariably  the  same  when  once  accepted.  Their  lands,  how- 
ever, continued  to  improve  ;  the  produce  increased  in  value. 
After  a  certain  time,  cultivation  had  brought  everything  into 
such  good  bearing  that  a  holding  could  be  divided  into  four, 
could  lodge  and  feed  four  families  instead  of  one.  The  fourth 
part,  the  peasant's  quarter,  quart  de  paysan,  as  it  was 
called,  was  equivalent  to  the  whole  of  the  original  plot,  to  the 
entire  paysan,  and  the  four  new  holdings  paid  between 
them  only  the  same  amount  of  rent  as  the  original  plot  paid. 


THE  COMMUNAL  MOVEMENT  IN  FRANCE    297 

So  the  domain,  from  the  moment  of  its  redemption  from  forced 
labour,  steadily  became  an  increasing  source  of  strength  to 
the  liberated  family,  which  was  not  encumbered  by  any  new 
burdens. 

But  let  us  pass  from  the  domain  to  the  town  and  the  small 
urban  workshop. 

In  the  feudal  town,  which  was  scarcely  more  than  a  market- 
town,  the  bourgeois  did  not  grow  rich  by  agriculture. 
For  a  long  time  he  could  find  no  means  at  all  of  growing  rich. 
But  when  wealth  increased  in  the  country,  in  the  way  I  have 
just  mentioned,  there  was  an  opportunity  for  commerce  and 
for  driving  a  lucrative  trade  :  commerce  and  industry  became 
sufficiently  remunerative  professions  to  enable  people  to  pursue 
them  exclusively.  The  country  towns,  whether  they  were 
situated  in  the  old  or  in  the  new  centres,  to  which  people  flocked, 
either  near  a  church  or  an  abbey  or  at  cross-roads,  were  good 
places  for  a  merchant  or  an  artisan  to  set  up  a  business.  The 
number  of  inhabitants  increased,  and  trade  and  industry 
became  sources  of  wealth. 

Those  of  the  townsfolk  who  prospered,  redeemed  them- 
selves, as  the  serfs  had  done,  from  the  duties  and  obligations 
of  their  own  serfdom  upon  payment  of  a  fixed  rent  or  a  single 
sum  of  money.  They  were  called  Francs-Bourgeois,  free 
burgesses,  after  their  liberation. 

But,  as  a  rule,  when  once  they  had  made  their  modest 
fortunes,  they  retired  from  business,  from  the  small  com- 
mercial undertakings  such  as  were  alone  practicable  in  those 
days,  but  which  formed  a  very  engrossing  occupation ;  they 
retired  from  industry,  which  was  carried  on  on  such  a  small 
scale  at  that  period  that  the  manufacturer  was  no  more  than 
a  plain  workman.  They  then  had  leisure  to  enjoy  rest  and 
independence ;  that  was  all.  They  did  not  increase  their 
prosperity  in  any  way  ;  they  remained  as  they  were.  They 
belonged  to  that  type  of  small  "  retired  "  tradespeople  which 
is  a  sure  sign  of  a  society  rapidly  tending  to  decadence.  New 
artisans,  new  manufacturers,  subject  to  the  feudal  duties  and 
obligations,  stepped  into  the  places  left  vacant  by  those  who 
had  freed  themselves  from  serfdom  and  retired  from  business. 
And  when  the  new-comers  in  their  turn  had  succeeded  in  freeing 
themselves  and  had  retired,  others  entered  the  business  in 


298  THE  COMMUNAL  MOVEMENT  IN  FRANCE 

their  place,  but  were  always  liable  to  the  restraints  of  serfdom. 
Thus  trade  did  not  achieve  its  liberty  like  the  land. 

And  the  trades,  when  abandoned  by  free  burgesses,  were 
not  merely  taken  up  again  and  again  by  people  in  a  servile 
condition,  but  were  taxed  more  and  more  heavily  by  the  lord 
in  proportion  as  the  profits  increased  :  it  was  a  very  different 
thing  from  the  fixed  ground  rent,  and  did  not  at  all  favour  the 
rapid  improvement  of  the  urban  population.  The  rates  were 
levied  on  the  sale  and  circulation  of  merchandise  ;  they  were 
proportioned  to  the  amount  of  business  done. 

The  rates  on  the  sale  were  paid  for  the  right  of  displaying 
goods  in  the  market-place  and  getting  them  weighed  or 
measured,  an  operation  over  which  the  lord  presided.  The 
merchant  was  not  even  allowed  to  sell  anything  in  his  own 
house  without  paying  the  dues,  which  were  more  or  less  heavy, 
and  proportional  to  the  total  amount  of  his  business.  And, 
what  is  more,  he  could  not  sell  anything  in  his  own  house  over 
a  certain  weight,  or  over  a  certain  quantity  or  measure, 
without  using  the  lord's  scales,  mine  (an  old  measure  of 
capacity)  or  ell.1 

The  rates  on  the  circulation  of  merchandise  consisted  in 
tolls,  which  were  increased  to  a  tremendous  extent.  "  The 
lords,  in  their  quality  of  landowners  and  leaders  of  the  state, 
maintained  the  roads,  bridges,  and  ferries ;  they  saw  to  the 
protection  of  the  roads  and  of  navigation.  In  order  to  com- 
pensate themselves  for  the  cost  of  the  maintenance  and  pro- 
tection of  the  roads,  they  appropriated  the  old  royal  tolls  of 
which  they  had  been  the  administrators  (when  they  were  counts 
or  beneficiaries)  before  they  became  their  owners  ;  they  estab- 
lished new  dues,  which  they  farmed  out  or  collected  directly ; 
tolls  on  the  bridges  (pontenage)  and  on  the  rivers  ;  highway 
tolls  (cauciage),  tolls  on  carts  (rouage),  tolls  on  flocks  of  sheep 
(pulverage),  harbour  dues,  tolls  on  barges,  etc.  (cayage  or 
rivage),  for  the  shipping  or  unshipping  of  merchandise ;  gate 
tolls  (portage)  on  passing  city  gates  ;  freightage  (de  conduit 
or  tr avers) ;  escort  tolls  (guiage),  when  the  traveller  wished  to 
be  accompanied  by  a  seigneurial  escort  for  safety,  etc."  2 

It  must  be  observed  that  in  the  case  of  the  small  merchant 

1  Pigeonneau,  Histoire  du  Commerce  de  la  France,  vol.  i.  p.  99. 

2  Ibid.  i.  pp.  96-98. 


THE  COMMUNAL  MOVEMENT  IN  FRANCE    299 

or  small  professional  manufacturer  the  dues  were  deducted 
from  what  formed  his  essential  means  of  existence,  while  the 
peasant  who  sold  only  the  surplus  of  his  produce  at  any  rate 
began  by  laying  aside  what  was  necessary  for  his  living.  No 
amount  of  competition  could  hinder  the  peasant  from  living 
in  a  liberal  manner  at  home  upon  all  that  his  labour  directly 
provided  :  it  could  only  diminish  the  profits  he  made  by  trading 
with  what  exceeded  his  needs ;  but  competition,  on  the  contrary, 
sometimes  prevented  the  trader  and  manufacturer  from  securing 
what  was  necessary  for  his  existence,  because  his  produce  was 
not  of  the  kind  on  which  it  was  possible  to  live  directly. 

There  was,  then,  an  immense  difference  between  agriculture 
and  industry,  between  the  domain  and  the  small  workshop, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  security  of  life  and  power  of  emanci- 
pation. 

The  analysis  we  have  made  gives  some  idea  of  it,  but 
historical  facts  attest  it  in  a  high  degree.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
the  majority  of  the  peasants  were  gradually  and  peaceably 
emancipating  themselves  from  the  ninth  to  the  eleventh 
century,  but  the  artisans  and  merchants  in  the  towns  were 
still  not  emancipated  at  the  beginning  of  the  twelfth  century ! 
And  they  had  to  move  heaven  and  earth  in  order  to  gain 
their  liberty. 

We  shall  see  this  great  upheaval  if  we  continue  to  follow 
the  history  of  the  communal  movement. 


f^v1;. 


** 


OF 


CHAPTER   XIX 

THE  COMMUNAL  MOVEMENT  IN  FKANCE— Continued 

THE  object  of  the  present  chapter  is  to  show  how  the  towns 
which,  as  we  have  seen,  had  become  feudal  in  the  north 
of  France,  or  at  any  rate  a  large  number  of  them,  passed  under 
the  communal  system. 

This  movement,  as  we  have  already  indicated,  owed  its 
origin  to  the  development  of  agriculture,  which  was  the  direct 
result  of  the  organisation  of  the  Frankish  domain,  and  which 
always  brings  in  its  train  the  development  of  urban  industries. 

Agricultural  prosperity,  in  fact,  is  accompanied  by  an 
increased  desire  for  animal  comforts  and  for  new  and  perfected 
forms  of  utensils  of  everyday  use.  Then  manufacture  becomes 
of  sufficient  importance  to  enable  people  who  devote  themselves 
to  it  exclusively  to  make  a  profit.  They  give  up  all  cultivation 
of  land,  and,  since  the  country  has  no  longer  any  hold  upon 
them,  they  find  their  natural  centre  in  the  town,  which  is 
favourable  to  the  development  of  business  owing  to  the  numbers 
of  people  who  flock  into  it  periodically  for  religious  services  or 
for  marketing. 

This  phenomenon  appeared  in  the  feudalised  part  of  the 
north  of  France  at  the  end  of  the  eleventh  and  at  the  beginning 
of  the  twelfth  century.  In  the  ninth  century  feudalism  had 
openly  triumphed  over  royal  power  ;  in  the  tenth  its  internal 
bonds  had  been  loosened  as  each  individual,  from  the  vassal 
to  the  serf,  tried  to  become  more  independent ;  in  the  eleventh 
we  should  expect  this  growing  liberty  to  produce  its  natural 
result,  an  outburst  of  productive  activity  and  fresh  openings 
for  work. 

Everything  at  that  time  bears  witness  to  this  prosperity. 

Charters  and  documents  indicate  that  it  was  a  period  when 
a  great  deal  of  fresh  land  was  cleared.  Immense  stretches  of 

300 


THE  COMMUNAL  MOVEMENT  IN  FRANCE     301 

forests  still  flourished  on  the  upper  and  lower  parts  of  the 
plateaux  :  men  began  to  encroach  on  them,  vto  penetrate  them, 
to  cross  them,  to  make  great  clearings  in  them ;  it  was,  as  it 
were,  a  second  conquest  of  the  land,  at  places  where  Nature  had 
been  left  untouched  or  had  reasserted  her  claim  to  the  soil. 
Historians  have  invented  a  legend  on  this  point :  they  noted 
a  revival  of  rare  activity,  a  return  to  hope  and  progress  after 
the  terrors  of  the  year  1000.  They  forget  that  life  does  not 
spring  from  torpor  :  even  supposing  the  movement,  the  out- 
burst of  energy  which  they  observe,  had  been  for  an  instant 
restrained  and  checked  by  passing  plagues  and  empty  appre- 
hensions (which,  by  the  way,  have  been  very  much  exaggerated) 
it  cannot  have  been  engendered  by  them  ;  it. must  have  origin- 
ated from  other  causes.  It  obviously  springs  from  vital  and 
fruitful  forces  whose  regular  progress  we  have  traced  through 
the  preceding  centuries  ;  it  is  the  logical  consequence  of  those 
forces. 

Parallel  with  this  agricultural  prosperity,  which  is  the 
point  of  departure,  industrial  prosperity,  which  is  the  point 
of  arrival,  so  to  speak,  is  directly  attested  by  the  extraordinary 
number  of  buildings  which  were  produced  at  that  time. 

It  was  then  that  those  monumental  castles  were  built  in 
stone,  with  imperishable  walls,  with  a  multitude  of  majestic 
towers,  with  gigantic  dungeons,  with  high-vaulted  halls,  with 
vast  inner  courts,  true  palaces  of  a  rich  and  powerful  race. 
They  were  the  first  examples  of  a  style  of  building  which  later 
centuries  have  merely  imitated  and  improved.  The  eleventh 
century  is  animated  by  a  bold  spirit  of  invention  which  is  the 
father  of  arts,  and  its  inventions  are  expressive  of  energy  and 
grandeur,  with  a  primitive  simplicity.  The  splendid  fortress, 
a  dwelling-place  worthy  of  princes,  which  I  have  just  roughly 
pictured,  was  the  immediate  successor  of  the  old  wooden 
castle,  standing  on  its  knoll,  surrounded  by  wooden  buildings 
and  engirt  by  its  palisade. 

At  the  same  time  the  great  Romanesque  churches  appeared, 
masterpieces  which,  with  their  majesty  and  ample  proportions, 
contrast  strangely  with  the  small  low  churches  which  preceded 
them  and  which  can  still  be  seen  joined  on  to  them  at  certain 
places  where  the  new^building  has  remained  unfinished.  Every- 
one has  heard  the ^story  told  of  the  fervour  with  which  the 


302  THE  COMMUNAL  MOVEMENT  IN  FRANCE 

churches  were  built :  how  all  classes  of  society  took  part  in 
their  construction,  and  every  individual  wished  to  contribute 
something — either  money,  or  personal  help,  or  experience.  We 
are  astounded  when  we  count  the  number  of  wonderful  monu- 
ments which  have  been  reared  since  that  time  even  in  the  most 
insignificant  places.  What  is  left  of  them  bears  witness  to  the 
magnificent  workmanship,  the  large  amount  of  money  spent 
on  them,  the  original  and  vigorous  sense  of  art  of  the  builders. 
A  new  art  was  created  which  dimmed  the  genius  of  the  centuries 
following  the  Middle  Ages — and  we  know  what  marvellous 
things  that  genius  produced. 

"  When  building  is  active,  all  industries,"  they  say, 
"  flourish."  It  is  .obvious  that  these  epic  castles  and  magnifi- 
cent Komanesque  cathedrals  were  not  built  at  such  heavy 
costs  and  with  such  a  knowledge  of  art  simply  to  remain  empty 
of  all  furniture,  devoid  of  all  ornament,  and  frequented  solely 
by  miserably  dressed  people.  It  is  clear  that  the  ardour  of 
perfecting  everything  which  was  manifested  in  this  outburst 
of  architecture  fired  all  the  other  trades  as  well. 

Two  sketches  will  give  some  idea  of  it : 

In  the  preceding  period,  "  the  furniture  of  a  castle  consisted 
of  wooden  benches,  chests  where  clothes  were  kept,  tressels 
and  planks  which  served  as  tables.  The  carpets,  often  even 
the  beds,  were  heaps  of  leaves  or  trusses  of  straw,  placed  on  the 
stone  floor.  The  only  signs  of  any  objects  of  luxury,  which 
could  not  be  furnished  by  the  fief,  were  a  few  precious  goblets, 
a  few  gold  or  silver  vases,  handed  down  from  generation  to 
generation,  until  they  had  to  be  sold  to  pay  the  ransom  of  the 
knight  or  to  be  melted  for  coin  ;  furs  brought  from  the  countries 
of  the  north  ;  birds  of  prey  dressed  for  the  hunt ;  and  above  all 
beautiful  chargers,  and  arms  of  a  stout  make  which  were  at  once 
the  pride  and  security  of  the  baron.  A  good  sword  had  its 
genealogy  and  its  history  :  it  was  worth  its  weight  in  gold  ;  and 
the  value  of  a  shield  was  rated  at  that  of  the  work  done  by 
harvesters  in  240  days."  x  We  cannot  help  seeing  that  that  is 
not  the  sort  of  furniture  that  is  suited  to  the  magnificent  feudal 
mansions  which  rivalled  the  Komanesque  churches.  Archae- 
ologists, however,  have  reproduced  the  wooden  furniture,  the 
iron  work,  the  tapestry,  the  gold  and  silver  work,  and  the 
1  Pigeonneau,  Histoire  du  Commerce  de  la  France,  vol.  i.  p.  95. 


THE  COMMUNAL  MOVEMENT  IN  FRANCE     303 

dresses,  whose  shape,  style,  and  ornamentation  harmonised 
well  with  the  architectural  style  of  that  epoch.  When  a  new 
and  very  effective  style  of  architecture  appears,  there  is  a  sort 
of  luxuriant  growth,  as  if  by  the  same  inspiration,  in  everything 
else.  If  the  reader  wishes  to  get  from  one  example  an  idea  of 
the  pomp  of  those  times,  he  has  only  to  read  in  the  chroniclers, 
or  in  the  works  of  the  authorities  on  these  subjects,  the  descrip- 
tion of  the  abbey  church  which  Suger  had  built  at  St. 
Denis ;  he  will  realise  that  a  building  on  the  exterior  of  which 
so  much  wealth  had  been  lavished  was  not  exactly  meant  to 
remain  devoid  of  splendour  within. 

The  communal  movement,  which  took  place  at  that  very 
time,  appears  as  the  entirely  logical  result  of  the  great  industrial 
development  we  have  noted.  We  shall  examine  it  next. 

The  aim  of  the  communal  movement  was  to  withdraw  the 
population  of  the  feudal  towns — an  essentially  industrial  popula- 
tion— from  the  arbitrary  control  of  the  lord  which  I  described 
and  explained  before.  There  is  nothing  which  industry  can 
so  ill  put  up  with  as  arbitrary  control,  because  it  constitutes 
something  unforeseen  which  escapes  the  already  elaborate 
calculations  upon  which  industry  is  forced  to  live.  It  forms 
a  stumbling-block  to  all  the  manufacturer's  clever  speculations 
and  combinations.  That  is  true  of  all  periods.  Even  in 
modern  times  the  same  things  occurred  as  the  result  of 
MacKinley's  Bills  :  America  suddenly  stopped  her  importation 
of  European  manufactured  goods  simply  by  subjecting  them, 
not  to  enormous  taxes,  but  to  capricious  and  fluctuating  taxes. 

But  though  it  may  be  of  vital  importance  to  get  rid  of  the 
arbitrary  element,  the  difficulty  is  to  find  means  to  do  so.  The 
manufacturers  of  the  principal  feudal  towns  had  actually 
secured  those  means  by  the  end  of  the  eleventh  century  owing 
to  the  progress  that  manufacture  had  made  :  they  had  become 
richer,  more  numerous,  and  better  trained  in  business.  With 
wealth,  numbers,  and  ability  anything  may  be  undertaken 
with  some  chance  of  success. 

But  none  of  the  manufacturers  was  of  sufficient  importance 
to  undertake  anything  as  a  private  man,  on  his  own  account, 
for  the  public  good.  It  must  be  remembered  that  at  that  time 
industry  was  carried  on  entirely  in  small  workshops.  The 
reasons  for  this  were  twofold,  In  the  first  place,  the  artisan 


304  THE  COMMUNAL  MOVEMENT  IN  FRANCE 

came  from  agricultural  families  established  by  the  Franks  in 
separate  households,  and  each  of  them,  when  emigrating  to  a 
town,  preserved  that  tradition  and  settled  apart  without  trying 
to  find  partners  in  his  work — his  trade  did  not  require  that  he 
should,  and  a  partner  would  only  have  been  in  his  way.  In 
the  second  place,  the  work  was  done  by  hand,  with  very  simple 
machinery,  and  demand  exceeded  supply,  a  phenomenon  which 
always  occurs  at  the  beginning  of  a  period  of  prospenty  in 
which  industry  is  encouraged.  The  large  employer,  whose 
business  it  is  to  provide  for  the  setting  up  of  large  pieces  of 
work  or  to  get  orders  from  a  larger  connection,  did  not  exist 
at  the  beginning  of  this  industrial  renaissance. 

So  it  was  of  prime  necessity  that  these  small  artisans  should 
come  to  an  understanding  between  themselves,  and  act  together, 
in  order  to  succeed  in  checking  in  some  way  the  arbitrary 
control  which  dominated  them. 

It  was  not  a  very  difficult  matter.  Their  interests  were 
identical.  No  one  had  any  interest  in  the  arbitrary  control  of 
the  lord.  The  artisans  had  admirable  opportunities  for  con- 
ferring together  and  acting  in  concert,  living  as  they  did  in  the 
narrow  confines  of  an  urban  aggregation. 

It  was  simply  a  question  of  giving  a  definite  form  to  what 
was  already  a  tacit  understanding.  It  was  necessary  to  find  a 
method  of  association  which  would  be  understood  by  everyone  : 
it  is  only  under  that  condition  that  persons  who  agree  spon- 
taneously upon  a  point  can  hope  to  effect  anything. 

The  artisans  of  the  feudal  towns  did  not  invent  this  method 
of  association  :  it  is  a  dangerous  thing  to  invent  a  new  method 
when  it  is  a  question  of  getting  a  whole  population  of  insignifi- 
cant people  to  march  together.  Nor  did  they  borrow  any  con- 
trivances from  the  old  municipes  :  we  saw  that  all  traces  of 
the  Roman  municipal  system  had  disappeared  from  the  feudal 
towns  in  the  north.  It  is  true  that  at  that  very  time,  and  even 
a  little  before,  the  towns  of  the  south  also  took  steps  towards 
independence  ;  but  the  two  movements  in  the  north  and  in  the 
south  were  merely  concomitant,  they  did  not  originate  from 
each  other.  They  sprang  at  once  from  the  same  cause, 
industrial  progress. 

The,  south  happened  to  be  a  little  in  front  of  the  north 
owing  to  two  circumstances. 


THE  COMMUNAL  MOVEMENT  IN  FRANCE    305 

In  the  first  place,  the  south  was,  through  its  proximity  to  the 
East  and,  thanks  to  the  Mediterranean,  in  much  closer  relation 
with  the  East,  whither  the  arts  and  the  luxury  of  antiquity  had 
retired  before  the  barbarians.  Thus  it  came  about  that  the 
prosperity  which  was  due  to  the  feudal  evolution  took  the 
form,  in  the  southern  towns,  of  a  revival  of  commerce  rather 
than  of  a  revival  of  manufacture,  and  the  merchant  gets  his 
returns  far  more  promptly  than  the  manufacturer. 

In  the  second  place,  the  south  had  been  far  less  disturbed 
by  the  feudal  system  than  the  north,  and  we  saw  that  it  had 
preserved  a  degenerate  form  of  the  Roman  type  of  government : 
the  inhabitants  elected  the  municipal  officers,  and  the  count 
sent  his  representative  to  levy  the  taxes  which  accrued  to  him. 
Thus  the  townsfolk  had  preserved  a  ready-made  organisation, 
which  enabled  them  to  act  in  concert  with  regard  to  the  count : 
the  municipal  officers  elected  by  the  people  were  empowered 
to  apply  to  him,  either  through  his  representative  or  directly, 
to  obtain  a  regular  assessment  of  the  taxes,  or  to  arrive  at 
an  understanding  concerning  the  diverse  claims  made  by  the 
count's  administration.  Moreover,  the  count  was  ready  enough 
to  fall  in  with  them,  because  he  had  never  been,  as  in  the  north, 
lord  over  the  town,  in  virtue  of  his  lordship  over  his  domain. 

Thus,  in  the  south,  there  was  already  an  established  form 
of  association  in  the  towns  before  any  movement  towards  inde- 
pendence existed  :  this  form  was  used  to  procure  exemptions. 

But  the  northern  towns  did  not  borrow  it  from  the  south  ; 
they  had  lost  it,  and  did  not  readopt  it  in  any  sense.  They 
used  a  form  of  association  which  the  Old  German  invasion, 
not  the  Frankish,  had  introduced  into  Gaul.  It  was  the  guild. 

The  guild,  unlike  feudalism,  which  was  a  coalition  of 
domains,  was  founded  essentially  upon  personal  bonds.  It 
did  not  unite  people  only  for  a  particular  object,  but  for  any 
purpose  in  which  help  was  needed. 

"  As  a  promise  of  help  and  support,"  says  Augustin  Thierry, 
u  it  embraced  all  the  dangers,  all  the  great  -accidents  to  which 
man  is  liable ;  it  was  a  mutual  assurance  against  violence  and 
abuse,  against  fire  and  shipwreck,  and  also  against  legal  damages 
incurred  for  crimes  and  even  for  offences  that  had  been  proved 
by  evidence.  In  pagan  Germany  each  of  these  associations 
was  under  the  patronage  of  a  god  or  a  hero  whose  name  served 
20 


306  THE  COMMUNAL  MOVEMENT  IN  FRANCE 

to  distinguish  it.  Each  had  leaders  chosen  from  its  midst, 
a  common  treasury  enriched  by  annual  contributions,  and 
obligatory  regulations  for  all  its  members.  It  thus  formed  a 
distinct  society  in  the  midst  of  the  tribe  or  nation.  The  society 
of  the  guild  was  not  restricted,  like  that  of  the  German  canton, 
to  a  definite  area  :  it  had  no  limit  of  any  kind,  it  spread  to 
distant  places,  and  united  persons  of  every  kind,  from  the  prince 
and  the  noble  to  the  labourer  or  the  free  artisan."  l 

It  can  be  easily  understood  that  the  Franks,  who  in 
Gaul  came  into  the  midst  of  the  earlier  invaders,  the  Old 
Germans,  were  not  much  attracted  by  this  kind  of  association, 
with  its  thoroughly  communal  form,  which  was  entirely  opposed 
to  the  exclusively  territorial  system  upon  which  they  had  built 
their  well-regulated  society.  So  the  guild  came  to  be  publicly 
reviled  and  officially  prohibited.  It  is  a  well-known  fact.  I 
will  limit  myself  to  quoting  three  capitularies  :  the  first  is 
Charlemagne's,  the  second  is  Louis  the  Debonnaire's,  and  the 
third  Carloman's. 

The  year  779  :  "  Let  no  one  dare  to  be  among  the  number 
of  those  who  conspire  to  form  guilds  and  bind  themselves  by 
oaths ;  and  even  though  they  may  make  arrangements  among 
themselves  for  purposes  of  mutual  help  or  for  provision  against 
fire  or  shipwreck,  let  everyone  be  warned  against  swearing  to 
join  such  associations."  2 

The  year  817 :  "  With  regard  to  the  guilds  of  serfs  which 
have  been  formed  in  Flanders,  .  .  .  and  in  other  maritime 
places,  we  desire  it  to  be  enjoined  upon  the  lords  of  those  serfs 
through  our  Missi  to  prevent  them  henceforth  from  forming 
such  guilds.  And  furthermore,  that  the  aforesaid  lords  be 
advised  that  those  among  them  whose  serfs  shall  determine 
to  form  guilds  of  this  kind,  after  this  our  will  shall  have  been 
made  known  to  them,  must  severally  pay  a  penalty  of  sixty 
sous."  3 

The  year  884  :  "  It  is  our  will  that  the  priests  and  officers  of 
the  count  command  the  villagers  not  to  unite  themselves  in 

1  Eecits  des  Temps  mfrovingiens ;  Considerations  sur  Vhistoire  de  France, 
chap.  vi.  p.  167. 

2  Capitula  Caroli  Magni,  apud  Scriptores  rer.  Gallic,  et  Frantic.,  vol.  v. 
p.  647. 

3  Capitula  Ludovici  Pii,  Baluze,  vol.  i.  col.  775. 


THE  COMMUNAL  MOVEMENT  IN  FRANCE    307 

associations,  commonly  known  as  guilds,  against  those  who 
make  them  pay  dues ;  but  rather  that  they  should  lay  their 
cause  before  the  priest  sent  by  the  bishop  (the  seigneurial 
bishop)  and  before  the  count's  officer,  who  is  stationed  in  the 
locality  for  the  purpose  of  setting  everything  straight  in  accord- 
ance with  prudence  and  reason."  * 

But  however  thoroughly  the  guilds  were  repressed  in  the 
north,  where  feudalism  had  developed  to  the  full,  they  had 
continued  to  flourish  in  the  extreme  north,  especially  in  the 
Gothic  parts  of  Scandinavia,  where  they  held  a  position  of 
honour  in  the  twelfth  century ;  and  they  had  flourished  in  the 
south  at  the  same  time,  where  they  had  been  propagated  by 
the  Visigoths,  and  where  the  feudal  system  had  never  flourished. 
It  was  the  south  which  conceived  the  idea  of  using  the  forms 
of  the  guild  for  the  creation  of  that  vast  popular  association, 
the  Truce  of  God  :  each  person  swore  an  oath  to  the  bishop, 
or  to  the  archdeacon  in  charge  of  temporal  affairs,  to  bring  armed 
assistance  to  his  neighbour  to  repress  the  attacks  of  those  who 
violated  the  Truce,  and  to  obtain  compensation  for  those  who 
had  been  injured.  The  association  was  thus  restricted  as  to 
its  object,  but  not  as  to  its  area,  for  it  extended  all  over  France, 
thanks  to  its  general  utility ;  and  was  not  restricted  as  to 
persons,  for  it  embraced  villeins,  ecclesiastics,  and  nobles  :  even 
children  of  fifteen  were  made  to  take  the  oath.  It  was  owing 
to  its  application  to  a  very  special  object  that  the  guild  re- 
gained some  sort  of  credit  in  the  north,  when  the  Truce  of 
God  was  introduced  there  chiefly  by  the  endeavours  of  the 
Capetians,  who  aimed  at  the  position  of  patrons  of  the  Church 
and  guardians  of  the  peace  of  the  kingdom.  But  it  was  only 
acknowledged  in  a  half-hearted  way,  for  these  guilds,  which 
laid  a  tight  hold  on  the  individual  and  yet  embraced  anyone 
who  liked  to  join,  were  bound  to  degenerate  and  break  up 
before  long  in  places  where  the  people  had  become  unaccus- 
tomed to  the  patriarchal  system.  And  that  was  exactly  what 
happened  to  the  Truce  of  God  :  very  soon  the  prudent  lords 
and  the  ecclesiastical  authorities  agreed  to  suppress  it,  and  to 
oppose  guilds  generally,  which,  in  fact,  turned  out  badly  in 
nine  cases  out  of  ten. 

Such  was  the  state  of  that  ancient  institution  when  the 

1  Capitula  Carlomanni  Regis,  Baluze,  vol.  ii.  col.  290. 


308  THE  COMMUNAL  MOVEMENT  IN  FRANCE 

artisans  and  petty  people  of  the  feudal  towns  decided  to  use  it 
as  a  means  of  coalition  against  the  arbitrary  control  of  the 
lord.  But,  under  the  influence  of  the  territorial  system  in  the 
midst  of  which  they  lived,  they  modified  it  in  such  a  way  as 
to  give  it  strength  and  assure  its  success,  though  they  probably 
were  not  conscious  of  so  doing;  they  restricted  their  associa- 
tion to  their  locality,  to  the  town.  They  called  this  union 
simply  communio,  communitas,  or,  in  low  Latin,  communia  : 
in  ordinary  language,  commune.  They  also  gave  it  other  names, 
some  of  which  arose  naturally,  others  which  were  imitated 
from  the  guilds,  such  as  "  Fraternity  "  and  "  Friendship." 

The  communal  covenant  of  Aire,  in  Artois,  shows  very 
clearly  in  its  wording  the  tradition  which  binds  it  to  the  guild, 
while  at  the  same  time  it  is  definitely  restricted  to  the  town  : 
according  to  the  preamble  of  a  charter  of  1188,  it  dates  as  far 
back  as  the  beginning  of  the  twelfth  century.  It  runs  as 
follows  : 

"  As  many  as  belong  to  the  Friendship  of  tlie  town  have 
promised  and  confirmed  their  words  by  an  oath  upon  their 
faith  that  they  will  aid  each  other  like  brothers  in  whatsoever 
is  good  and  useful.  That  if  a  man  commit  any  offence,  whether 
of  word  or  deed,  against  another,  he  that  is  injured  shall  not 
take  vengeance  himself  nor  shall  his  family  .  .  .  but  he  shall 
lodge  a  complaint  against  the  offender,  who  shall  pay  a  penalty 
for  his  crime  according  as  shall  be  determined  by  twelve  chosen 
judges.  And  if  he  that  did  the  wrong  or  he  that  suffered  it, 
after  three  times  receiving  warning,  refuse  to  submit  to  this 
arbitration,  he  shall  be  expelled  from  the  Friendship  as  an  evil 
and  perjured  man. 

"  If  a  member  of  the  Friendship  have  lost  his  property  by 
pillage  or  otherwise,  and  be  able  to  show  traces  of  what  he  hath 
lost,  he  shall  lodge  a  complaint  before  him  who  shall  have 
been  set  at  the  head  of  the  Friendship  (ad  prcefectum  Amicitice), 
and  he,  after  having  convoked  the  Friends  of  the  town,  shall  go 
with  them  in  search  of  it  as  far  as  a  day's  journey  there  and 
back — (this,  by  the  way,  is  the  same  as  in  the  Truce  of  God) — 
and  he  who  shall  refuse  or  neglect  to  go  in  search  shall  pay  five 
sous  as  a  fine  to  the  Friendship. 

"  If  a  disturbance  occur  in  the  town,  whosoever  is  a  member 
of  the  Friendship  and  hears  of  a  disturbance,  and  does  not  go 


THE  COMMUNAL  MOVEMENT  IN  FRANCE  309 

to  it  and  bear  help  with  all  his  might  as  need  demands,  shall 
pay  a  fine  of  five  sous  to  the  community. 

"  If  a  member  of  the  Friendship  have  had  his  house  burned 
down,  or  if  he  have  had  to  pay  the  greater  part  of  his  possessions 
for  his  ransom  when  he  hath  been  taken  prisoner,  each  of  the 
Friends  shall  give  a  crown  to  assist  the  impoverished  Friend."  l 

The  commune,  it  is  clear,  differed  from  the  guild  only  in 
so  far  as  it  was  limited  to  the  land  belonging  to  a  town.  The 
natural  and  fairly  obvious  cause  of  this  limitation  was  that 
the  commune  had  in  view  local  interests.  Its  object  was  to 
negotiate  with  the  lord  of  the  place  on  friendly  terms  concerning 
the  relations  on  which  he  stood  with  the  people  of  that  place  : 
the  real  objects  and  interests  of  these  petty  people  went  no 
further.  An  understanding,  a  well-concerted  general  action, 
was  the  only  thing  possible  in  an  urban  centre  where  the 
inhabitants  were  crowded  together,  and  especially  with  a 
people  that  was  not  accustomed  to  enterprises  on  a  large  scale. 
It  would  only  have  embarrassed  them  had  they  extended  their 
association  outside  the  town. 

In  order  to  form  their  association  they  had  to  seize  the 
opportunity  afforded  by  some  fortunate  circumstance  which 
accidentally  caused  the  ruling  power  to  be  absent  from  the 
town  :  they  chose  a  moment  when  the  lay  or  ecclesiastical 
lord  or  his  representative  was  away.  As  soon  as  a  mutual 
oath  had  been  taken,  chiefs  were  chosen  to  form  a  council,  and 
among  them  one  was  appointed  to  take  the  lead.  The  chiefs 
elect  swore  a  second  oath  that  they  would  discharge  their  duties 
loyally.  A  subscription  was  voted  to  defray  the  expenses  of 
the  administration.  All  this  was  the  same  as  in  the  guild. 

When  the  commune  or  community  had  been  formed  in  this 
way,  the  members  armed  themselves  with  any  of  their  work- 
man's tools  which  could  be  used  as  weapons — hatchets,  cutting 
instruments  of  all  sorts,  bars  and  lumps  of  iron,  as  well  as  old 
arms  and  plain  sticks,  not  to  mention  the  variety  of  objects 
that  were  used  as  projectiles.  Thanks  to  the  superiority  of 
their  numbers,  they  were  able  to  take  possession  of  the  men 
whom  the  lord  had  left  as  a  guard  for  the  town.  They  then 
shut  the  town  gates. 

The  fact  that  the  town  was  usually  surrounded  by  walls, 
1  Recuett  des  ordonnances  des  rois  de  France,  vol.  xii.  p.  562, 


3io  THE  COMMUNAL  MOVEMENT  IN  FRANCE 

made  it  possible  for  this  crowd  in  revolt  to  assume  all  of  a  sudden 
the  aspect  of  a  military  force  capable  of  holding  the  lord  in 
check  :  otherwise  all  resistance  in  the  struggle  would  have  been 
impossible.  The  lord,  on  being  warned  of  the  league,  hastened 
to  return,  accompanied  by  his  fighting  band,  which  he  reinforced, 
if  necessary,  from  that  of  some. ally.  When  he  arrived  before 
the  closed  gates  of  the  town,  a  parley  was  held.  The  chiefs 
became  spokesmen  for  the  people  of  the  commune,  and  declared 
that  they  were  ready  to  open  the  gates  of  the  town  and  prove 
themselves  the  lord's  most  faithful  subjects,  on  condition  that 
he  would  swear  an  oath,  and  state  in  writing  that  he  would 
respect  their  grievances  :  on  condition  that  he  would  give  them 
a  charter,  and  swear  to  observe  it.  They  generally  demanded 
to  be  freed  from  the  servile  obligations  of  mortmain  and 
formariage — that  is  to  say,  the  obligation  of  paying  a  due  and 
obtaining  the  consent  of  the  lord  for  the  transmission  of  their 
estates  and  for  marrying  as  they  chose.  With  regard  to  the 
taxes  that  were  levied  at  haphazard  and  at  odd  times  upon 
the  produce  of  their  industry,  they  demanded  that  they  should 
be  replaced  by  a  single  annual  tax,  fixed  once  for  all,  except  in 
very  special  and  clearly  specified  cases — as,  for  example,  if  the 
lord  should  have  to  pay  his  ransom,  or  had  to  arm  his  son  as  a 
knight,  etc.  Finally,  they  demanded  that  the  fines  imposed 
by  the  lord's  court  of  law  should  be  regulated  according  to  a 
definite  scale.  I  need  hardly  say  that  these  conditions  put  an 
end  to  the  unlimited  profits  which  the  lord  derived  from  the 
inhabitants,  and  placed  the  town  in  the  same  position,  from 
the  point  of  view  of  dues,  as  the  freed  domain,  which  was  un- 
encumbered of  its  servile  obligations  and  relieved  of  all  taxation 
in  return  for  an  invariable  rent.  Thus  the  lord  was  reduced  all 
along  the  line  as  much  by  the  estates  as  by  the  town  to  the 
state  of  an  annuitant  with  a  fixed  annuity. 

After  some  words  had  been  exchanged  they  usually  came  to 
blows.  The  lord  tried  to  force  an  entrance.  Ordinarily,  he 
failed  :  we  shall  see,  a  little  later,  when  we  come  to  speak  of 
feudal  decadence,  why  he  was  ill  equipped,  from  a  military 
standpoint,  for  taking  a  town  by  assault.  His  failure  made 
him  decide  to  resign  himself  to  grant  the  inhabitants  their 
demands.  Then  the  gates  were  opened,  and  he  was  received 
with  the  liveliest  expressions  of  joy  and  the  greatest  marks 


THE  COMMUNAL  MOVEMENT  IN  FRANCE    311 

of  honour.  But  once  lie  was  in  the  town  and  experienced  a 
pressing  need  for  money,  he  easily  forgot  the  exact  limits  of 
his  diminished  rights  ;  moreover,  he  was  quite  ready  to  declare 
that  his  sworn  promises  had  been  unfairly  extracted  from  him 
by  the  revolt :  and  matters  returned  to  their  former  state. 

Those  who  had  put  faith  in  his  oath  were  very  indignant, 
and  brooded  in  secret  upon  their  disappointment,  until  another 
favourable  opportunity  occurred,  like  the  first,  for  making  a 
fresh  oath  and  forming  a  commune  a  second  time.  The 
whole  performance  as  we  have  just  described  it  was  gone 
through  again,  until  the  people  had  obtained  a  fresh  oath 
that  their  former  demands  should  be  respected.  But  this  time 
the  inhabitants  determined  to  get  effective  guarantees  for  the 
maintenance  of  their  acquired  rights.  They  claimed  (1)  the 
right  of  remaining  permanently  united  in  a  commune — that  is 
to  say,  of  remaining  bound  together  by  oath,  instead  of  dissolving 
their  association  ;  (2)  the  right  of  self-government,  by  electing 
peers,  or  sheriffs,  from  among  themselves,  who  should  be  charged 
to  preserve  order  and  see  to  the  public  interests,  and  a  superior 
magistrate,  called  "  major  "  or  mayor  ;  (3)  the  right  of  forming 
an  independent  militia  for  the  defence  of  their  liberties  and 
the  protection  of  their  town.  In  this  way  the  lord  was  prevented 
from  having  any  representatives  in  the  town,  whether  of  high 
rank  or  low  ;  but  the  peers  and  the  mayor  were  charged  to 
swear  him  an  oath  of  allegiance  and  homage  in  the  name  of  the 
commune,  which  was  simply  a  pledge  that  they  would  not 
attempt  any  violation  of  his  rights,  and  would  help  in  the 
defence  of  the  fief.  The  commune  itself  undertook  to  see  to 
the  payment  of  the  stipulated  urban  tax  (upon  which  they  had 
come  to  an  agreement). 

All  this  meant  the  complete  deposition  of  the  lord  from 
his  authority,  except  in  so  far  as  he  was  recognised  in  the  oath 
of  allegiance  and  received  the  stipulated  tax. 

This,  then,  was  the  triumphant  establishment  of  the  commune. 
The  causes  which  produced  it,  and  which  we  have  followed 
throughout  their  development,  occurred  in  all  the  towns,  so 
that  in  the  twelfth  century,  as  was  natural,  there  was  a  rapid 
and  spontaneous  development  of  communes  in  every  place  in 
the  feudal  north. 

Owing  to  similar  causes,  which  developed  more  rapidly  in 


312    THE  COMMUNAL  MOVEMENT  IN  FRANCE 

the  south,  as  we  have  seen,  the  southern  towns  acquired  their 
independence  a  little  earlier  than  the  northern  towns,  using 
forms  borrowed  from  the  municipes  of  the  barbarian  period. 

We  have  been  able  to  describe  only  the  dominant  facts, 
but  this  urban  emancipation  took  place  in  other  ways  as  well ; 
they  are,  however,  only  variants  of  the  same  phenomenon. 

In  the  first  place,  we  are  bound  to  say  that  the  communes 
were  sometimes  justly  and  favourably  received  by  the  lords, 
who  recognised  them  as  a  means  to  an  inevitable  enfranchise- 
ment, like  that  of  the  rural  serfs  :  such  was  the  case  at  Noyon, 
where  the  commune  was  organised  by  the  seigneurial  bishop  ; 
also  in  Flanders,  where  the  counts  approved  of  the  creation 
of  the  great  communes,  which  became  so  famous  there. 

In  other  places  the  lords  met  the  communal  movement 
half-way,  by  making  their  feudal  towns  into  burgess  towns, 
with  exemption  from  the  servile  obligations  of  mortmain  and 
formariage,  and  from  arbitrarily  imposed  taxes,  like  the 
communes,  but  ruled  by  sheriffs  and  mayors,  whom  the  lords 
themselves  chose  from  among  the  inhabitants  with  their  assist- 
ance. By  that  means  they  retained  a  portion  of  their  ruling 
authority. 

Whatever  slight  variations  there  may  have  been,  it  neverthe- 
less came  about  that  from  one  end  of  France  to  the  other  the 
whole  of  the  new  population  which  the  development  of  manu- 
facture had  caused  to  spring  up  in  the  towns  escaped  from 
the  control  of  the  domain  and  the  control  of  the  lord  which 
the  Franks  had  established.  The  strength  that  had  been  based 
on  the  estate  was  there  replaced  by  a  strength  based  on  personal 
bonds,  on  the  community.  The  old  order  of  things  which  had 
prevailed  before  the  coming  of  the  Franks  reappeared  :  namely, 
the  Roman  municipes  and  the  guild  of  the  Old  Germans,  two 
institutions  of  the  patriarchal  world.  An  industrial  population, 
which  does  not  make  its  living  on  the  estate,  nor  bases  its  inde- 
pendence upon  the  possession  of  the  land, — from  which  all  the 
necessaries  of  life  may  be  directly  drawn, — but  whose  existence 
depends  on  transactions  between  one  person  and  another,  and 
on  what  will  bring  success  in  dealing  with  others,  such  a  popu- 
lation was  a  very  suitable  medium  for  the  development  of 
those  institutions. 

These  urban  associations  had  not  the  same  characteristics 


THE  COMMUNAL  MOVEMENT  IN  FRANCE     313 

as  those  formed  among  particularist  families,  which  were  re- 
stricted to  a  particular  purpose,  and  were  only  temporary. 
They  were,  on  the  contrary,  of  vital  importance,  and  so  formed 
as  to  be  able  to  embrace  all  needs  ;  they  were,  moreover,  per- 
manent :  they  belonged  to  the  patriarchal  type.  That  is  at 
once  evident  from  the  way  in  which  they  worked.  Their 
members  resorted  to  them  as  if  to  the  one  obvious  resource 
for  every  emergency.  By  so  doing  they  fulfilled  a  part  of  the 
communal  oath  they  made  :  the  promise  to  give  mutual  help 
in  all  difficulties.  If  anything  was  amiss  with  their  affairs  in 
the  city,  the  people  appealed  to  the  town  authority  and  demanded 
that  the  urban  community  should  take  steps  to  set  them  right 
and  provide  for  their  interests.  Nothing  could  be  more  striking 
in  this  respect  than  the  way  in  which  the  communal  or  municipal 
authority  was  asked  by  the  artisans  to  sanction  the  rules  of  the 
corporations  of  working  men,  who  looked  up  to  their  commune  or 
their  municipality  as  the  Arab  does  to  his  tribe  :  in  their  eyes 
it  was  an  association  which  was  responsible  for  the  existence 
and  the  interests  of  all  its  members. 

Initiative  in  this  social  system  consists  not  in  being  able  to 
find  a  way  out  of  difficulties  quite  independently,  but  in  appeal- 
ing to  a  body  which  has  power  to  coerce  the  other  members 
to  act  in  the  desired  direction.  It  was  in  that  way  that  the 
artisans  of  the  freed  towns  exercised  a  vigilant  pressure  upon 
them  to  coerce  them  to  look  after  the  interests  of  their  trades. 
They  intended  to  make,  and  they  did  make,  their  fortunes, 
not  by  overcoming,  by  their  superior  abilities,  the  difficulties 
caused  by  competition,  but  by  compelling  the  inhabitants,  by 
stringent  industrial  and  commercial  regulations,  to  patronise 
them  exclusively,  and  divide  their  custom  almost  uniformly 
between  their  different  shops. 

So,  owing  to  these  urban  institutions  which  were  reintro- 
duced  from  the  Old  World,  the  private  and  personal  initiative 
which  the  Franks  had  introduced  into  the  country  disappeared 
from  many  parts  of  France.  Personal  responsibility  dis- 
appeared almost  everywhere  to  a  certain  extent  before  the 
community,  with  its  regular  and  practical  efficiency,  and  the 
idea  which  is  inherent  in  it. 

But  still,  this  return  to  the  past  could  not  have  produced 
a  general  effect,  nor  perhaps  a  very  durable  one.  had  not  other 


314    THE  COMMUNAL  MOVEMENT  IN  FRANCE 

causes  happened  to  give  a  more  powerful  impetus  in  the  same 
direction.  The  communes,  in  fact,  would  soon  have  become 
ineffective  had  they  been  left  to  themselves.  That,  indeed, 
was  inherent  in  their  constitution.  It  was  not  long 
before  they  became  divided  into  factions  (which  inevitably 
appear  in  associations  that  are.  responsible  for  everything). 
During  all  their  early  days  they  continued  to  lead  a  stormy 
existence,  which  was  accompanied  by  disorderly  movements. 
That  is  what  makes  the  history  of  their  formation  so  dramatic. 

But  an  institution  developed  by  their  side  which  came  to 
their  aid,  and  which,  by  being  able  to  dominate  them,  thanks 
to  their  difficulties  and  divisions,  maintained  them,  but  took 
great  care  not  to  show  them  the  road  which  would  lead  them 
back  to  individual  initiative  and  personal  independence  :  this 
institution  is  Royal  Power. 

We  shall  soon  see  how  royal  power  in  France,  which  was 
handed  down  from  the  Merovingians,  and  also  dated  back  to 
communal  times,  found  once  more  the  road  to  influence. 

But  we  must  first  see  what  transformation  took  place  in 
the  resources  and  mode  of  life  of  the  owners  of  estates,  the 
real  successors  of  the  Franks,  which  made  them  at  this  very 
period  incapable  of  carrying  on  the  work  of  their  predecessors  ; 
and  how,  under  the  action  of  these  combined  causes,  feudal 
society  foundered,  after  having  reached  such  heights  of  power. 


CHAPTER  XX 
CHIVALKY  OR  FEUDAL  MILITARISM 

WE  have  already  mentioned  what  natural  causes  led  to 
the  constitution  of  the  communes,  and  what  already 
known  form  of  association  they  used.  But  we  have  not  ex- 
plained precisely  how  it  came  about  that  the  seigneurial  auth- 
ority, which  was  exercised  in  so  sovereign  a  manner  over  the 
feudal  towns,  soon  withdrew  almost  everywhere  before  their 
claims. 

Let  us  consider  what  a  commune  really  was :  a  sworn 
league  of  artisans  who  made  themselves  masters  of  their  town 
on  the  sly,  shut  the  gates,  and  sheltered  themselves  within 
the  walls.  All  the  towns  that  were  dependent  on  the  same 
manor  did  not  rise  together ;  the  lord  had  only  to  deal  with 
one  at  a  time  :  the  communal  league  was,  as  we  have  seen, 
limited  to  the  inhabitants  of  one  town.  What,  then,  was  the 
lord's  real  condition  at  the  end  of  the  eleventh  century  and 
at  the  beginning  of  the  twelfth,  that  he  should  have  been  forced 
to  a  compromise  under  these  circumstances  ?  That  is  the 
question  we  have  now  to  elucidate  in  order  to  realise  what 
events  were  then  sweeping  away  the  feudal  system,  just  as 
before  we  formed  some  idea  of  those  which  led  up  to  it. 

The  feudal  system  is  generally  supposed  to  have  sprung 
from  the  dissolution  of  the  Carlovingian  Empire  in  the  ninth 
century,  and  is  thought  to  have  gone  on  gaining  strength  and 
tightening  its  bonds  till  the  twelfth  century.  According  to 
that  theory,  it  would  have  come  into  contact  with  the  small 
communes  and  the  petty  Capetian  kings  when  it  was  in  the 
fulness  of  its  vigour,  and  would  have  bowed  before  them. 
That  would  have  been  very  obliging  on  its  part,  and  nothing 
could  have  been  more  compliant.  But  things  did  not  happen, 
and  could  not  have  happened  in  that  way. 

3*5 


316        CHIVALRY  OR  FEUDAL  MILITARISM 

The  feudal  system  did  not  originate  in  the  ninth  century ; 
it  began  to  be  formed  by  means  of  the  "  immunities,"  in  opposi- 
tion to  the  Merovingian  domination,  as  soon  as  that  dynasty 
was  seriously  established  in  Gaul — that  is  to  say,  quite  as  early 
as  the  seventh  century.1  In  the  ninth  its  cohesive  power  was 
at  its  height :  all  the  estates,  in  prder  to  secure  their  inviol- 
ability against  the  interference  of  the  royal  officials  by  placing 
themselves  under  the  protection  of  the  most  powerful  land- 
owners, were  for  a  moment  grouped  under  no  more  than  thirty 
great  suzerains. 

But  when  royalty  had  completely  lost  its  power  under 
the  last  Carlovingians,  victorious  feudalism  had  no  longer  need 
of  so  close  and  solid  a  union,  and  relaxed  its  bonds  :  the  emanci- 
pation of  the  vassals  and  the  enfranchisement  of  the  serfs 
went  on  during  the  tenth  and  eleventh  centuries  ;  so  that,  by 
the  end  of  the  eleventh,  when  the  insurrection  of  the  com- 
munes took  place,  the  power  of  the  lords  had  already  been 
gradually  diminishing  for  two  centuries,  owing  to  the  progress 
that  had  been  made  towards  liberty. 

Feudalism,  then,  is  divided  into  two  great  periods  :  one  of 
concentration,  the  other  of  deconcentration.  The  gradual  decline 
of  the  power  of  the  lords  during  the  second  period  was  not 
the  effect  of  any  reaction  against  the  particularist  form  of 
society  from  which  it  had  originated,  but  simply  the  accom- 
plishment of  the  law  that  power  involved.  The  seigneurial 
power  had  been  organised  solely  in  opposition  to  royal  power  ; 
once  that  power  was  suppressed,  the  movement  towards  inde- 
pendence, which  had  led  the  landowners  to  unite  their  domains 
in  a  league,  necessarily  impelled  them  to  break  up  the  league. 
The  vassals  of  all  ranks  must  have  rivalled  one  another  in  their 
efforts  to  rid  themselves  of  their  suzerains.  It  was  very  much 
the  same  kind  of  movement  which  at  the  very  first  drove  the 
Franks  to  free  themselves  from  the  Merovingian  truste  as 
soon  as  the  north  of  Gaul  had  been  conquered  and  the  object 
for  which  they  had  joined  it  was  achieved. 

But  whilst  the  power  of  the  lords  declined  in  this  way, 

everything  it  had  freed  from  the  Romano-barbarian  system  of 

administration  in  its  own  struggle  for  liberty  continued  to 

advance  behind  it.     For  this  reason  the  period  of  the  decon- 

1  See  above,  Chap.  VI.  pp.  109,  110. 


CHIVALRY  OR  FEUDAL  MILITARISM     317 

centration  of  feudalism  was  really  the  period  when  it  was  at 
its  zenith,  which  was  marked  by  the  increasing  independence 
and  the  increasing  amount  of  land  in  the  hands  of  the  people, 
and  signalised  in  various  branches  of  human  activity  by  results 
that  are  full  of  originality  and  grandeur,  which  are  illumined 
by  the  full  brilliancy  of  the  particularist  spirit.1 

So  there  is  nothing  mysterious  in  the  very  considerable 
diminution  of  the  power  of  the  lords  at  the  time  when  the 
communes  appeared.  And  it  was  owing  to  that  diminution 
of  power  that  the  communes  were  established  so  easily  in 
spite  of  the  difficulties  some  of  them  encountered  at  the  outset. 
They  were  the  last  to  embark  upon  the  road  to  emancipation, 
which  had  been  opened  up  and  prepared  by  the  vassals  and 
the  serfs  :  the  task  is  lightest  for  those  who  are  the  last  to 
come  to  the  work. 

Since  the  great  feudatories  of  the  first  Carlovingians  had 
wound  up  the  empire,  the  vassals  had  not  ceased  striving,  as  we 
know,  to  diminish  their  military  obligations  in  every  possible 
way  with  regard  to  the  duration  of  military  service,  the  distance 
of  their  expeditions,  and  the  nature  of  the  cases  necessitating 
war.  In  all  the  histories  we  read  of  the  "  disorder  "  of  the 
tenth  century,  when,  upon  the  nearly  complete  disappearance  of 
royalty,  the  inferior  nobles,  secure  behind  their  castle  walls, 
began  on  all  sides  to  make  themselves  independent  of  their 
suzerains  as  far  as  possible.  So  the  decay  of  the  power  of  the 
lords  dated  a  long  time  back,  and  had  therefore  gone  a  con- 
siderable distance  before  the  communes  rebelled.  The  serfs, 
likewise,  who  had  been  obliged  to  contribute  work  in  the  fields, 
but  not  military  service,  had  rivalled  each  other  in  getting 
exemption  from  the  forced  labour  to  which  they  were  liable 
on  the  reserve  estate,  the  working  of  which  the  lord  directed 
just  as  Charlemagne  himself  did,  as  we  saw.  They  redeemed 
themselves  from  forced  labour  with  the  master's  consent, 
or  by  some  arrangement  which  the  lord  made  of  his  own 
accord,  by  the  payment  of  rent  in  kind  or  in  money. 
So  from  this  point  of  view  also  the  power  of  the  lords  had 
been  diminishing  for  a  long  time,  and  we  must  add  that  it 
had  almost  entirely  disappeared  by  the  time  the  communes 
revolted. 

1  See  above,  Chap.  XII.  p.  205,  and  Chap.  XIX.  pp.  301-303. 


3i8       CHIVALRY  OR  FEUDAL  MILITARISM 

I  have  recalled  to  the  reader's  mind  only  a  few  of  the  main 
events  well  known  to  everyone,  in  order  to  enable  him  more 
easily  to  carry  himself  in  imagination  back  to  the  period  we 
are  studying  ;  but  there  is  everywhere  an  abundance  of  evidence, 
which  I  have  indicated  elsewhere,  concerning  this  progressive 
emancipation  of  the  vassals  and  the  serfs  from  the  end  of  the 
ninth  century.1 

The  position  of  the  lord  at  the  time  of  the  formation  of  the 
communes  was  definitely  determined  by  the  state  of  affairs  at 
the  end  of  the  eleventh  century  resulting  from  this  social  trans- 
formation. 

From  the  military  standpoint,  owing  to  the  effect  of  the 
movement  of  the  vassals  towards  independence,  the  lord  was 
for  three  parts  of  the  year  an  officer  without  troops,  and  for 
the  fourth  part  was  an  officer  at  the  head  of  a  very  reduced 
and  unwilling  army.  He  counted  his  knights  by  units  and  not 
by  dozens. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  property,  owing  to  the  effect 
of  the  enfranchisement  of  the  serfs,  he  no  longer  enjoyed  the 
use  of  his  lands,  except  in  so  far  as  he  collected  a  regular  rent 
from  his  tenants. 

There  was  in  very  truth  a  vast  difference  between  this 
lord  and  the  "  baron  "  of  the  ninth  century  of  whom  Charle- 
magne was  simply  the  most  finished  type  ! 

When  one  of  these  diminished  lords  found  himself  greeted 
with  the  declaration  of  a  commune,  what  could  he  do  ? 

What  could  he  do  in  a  military  way  ?  It  was  a  question 
of  besieging  a  town.  An  enterprise  of  that  kind  could  not  be 
attempted  with  a  handful  of  vassals  on  horseback,  who  were 
only  bound  to  serve  for  a  short  time.  So  the  lord  had  recourse 
to  all  kinds  of  feints,  and,  finally,  had  to  grant  concessions  in 
order  to  get  the  gates  opened  for  him.  It  might  have  been 
possible  to  decoy  the  country  people  into  coming  to  the  siege 
by  saying  that,  as  the  town  was  endeavouring  to  set  itself  free, 
it  was  a  case  of  the  defence  of  the  fief,  though  even  that  was 
open  to  dispute.  But  the  rustics,  the  emancipated  serfs, 
would  not  have  allowed  themselves  to  be  easily  persuaded 
to  march  against  common  people  like  themselves,  who  were 
aspiring  to  the  same  freedom  as  they  had  won.  Besides,  they 
1  See  above.  Chap.  XII,  p.  205. 


CHIVALRY  OR  FEUDAL  MILITARISM       319 

were  within  their  rights  if  they  refused  to  go  farther  than  a 
day's  journey  from  home,  sometimes  less,  and  insisted  on 
returning  the  next  day  or  the  same  evening.  It  must  be  re- 
membered, too,  that  the  town  possessed  no  lands  outside  its 
walls  which  it  might  have  been  possible  to  plunder,  in  order 
to  provoke  a  sortie  or  a  surrender,  which  was  in  those  days 
one  of  the  accepted  methods  of  the  art  of  besieging.  Lastly, 
in  attacking  the  city  in  revolt,  the  lord  was  attacking  his  own 
possessions  :  if  he  pushed  the  war  to  extremities,  he  was  simply 
destroying  his  own  property.  In  short,  he  was  fighting  against 
himself.  It  was  to  his  interest  to  come  to  terms.  What  profit 
would  it  have  been  to  him  to  have  in  his  hands  a  town  that  had 
been  taken  by  assault  and  sacked  ?  Who  would  have  come  to 
live  in  it  then  ?  From  whom  could  he  have  exacted  the  reduced 
and  immutable  tax  which  the  members  of  commune  proposed 
to  allow  him  ?  And  what  could  he  do  as  landowner  ?  He 
was  forced,  whether  he  willed  it  or  no,  to  humble  himself  to 
accept  from  the  artisans  of  the  town  the  payment  of  a  fixed 
rental,  just  as  he  had  already  accepted  it  from  the  tenants  of 
his  estates  :  no  victory  over  the  commune  could  free  him  from 
that  consequence.  The  artisans,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  who 
every  day  went  to  swell  the  population  of  the  towns,  found 
this  fixity  of  dues  absolutely  essential  to  their  business  ;  besides, 
they  had  experienced  the  benefits  of  it  in  the  agricultural  work 
which  they  had  just  left.  So  that  the  lord  who  obstinately 
refused  to  come  to  any  agreement  of  that  kind  would  have 
completely  put  a  stop  to  the  peopling  of  his  town  ;  the  artisans 
would  have  gone  to  the  towns  of  other  lords  who  were  more 
liberal  or  better  advised  and  made  no  objection  to  the  fixed 
tax.  So  we  need  not  be  astonished  to  find  that  many  lords 
not  only  gave  way  to  the  communes,  but  sided  with  them 
from  the  first,  or  even  went  half-way  to  meet  their  demands. 
Those  among  them  who  succeeded  in  retaining  some  control 
over  the  nomination  of  the  urban  magistrates  by  establishing 
the  system  of  "  burgess  towns  "  were  none  the  less  obliged  to 
promise  those  towns  that  the  taxes  should  be  immutable.  The 
lords,  then,  could  hope  to  realise  no  other  object  in  their  struggle 
with  the  artisans  than  a  settlement  with  them  on  the  best 
terms  possible,  but  in  any  case  they  were  obliged  to  come  to 
terms. 


320       CHIVALRY  OR  FEUDAL  MILITARISM 

So  much,  for  the  explanation  of  the  twofold  weakness  of 
the  lord  as  soldier  and  as  landowner  in  relation  to  the  commune  : 
his  weakness  was  complete. 

A  further  proof  of  what  I  have  just  said  concerning  the  lord's 
position  from  the  military  point  of  view  lies  in  the  following 
facts.  At  that  very  time  we  find  that  the  lords  were  obliged, 
when  they  wished  to  make  war  at  all  hazards,  to  employ  "  mer- 
cenary troops."  They  had  to  pay  knights  who  were  not  their 
own  vassals,  or  who  did  not  consider  themselves  bound  to  go 
to  battle  as  vassals.  They  were  even  reduced  to  taking  into 
their  pay  bands  of  vagrants  who  made  war  their  trade.  That 
was  the  beginning  of  the  soldier's  profession,  the  first  appearance 
of  armies  enrolled  for  pay.  The  feudal  army  was  well  on  the 
way  to  dissolution. 

There  is  also  a  further  proof  of  what  I  said  regarding  the 
lord's  position  as  landowner.  At  that  very  time  we  find  that 
the  seigneurial  dues  more  and  more  took  the  form  of  rent. 
Step  by  step  the  lord  was  driven  to  hire  out  everything  in 
return  for  rent.  Even  the  people  to  whom  he  intrusted  the 
administration  of  justice,  either  as  his  subordinates  or  as  his 
representatives,  received  that  office  in  feu ;  it  was  known  as  a 
"  fief  without  land."  They  made  their  profits  out  of  the  fines, 
the  confiscations,  and  the  fees  for  lawsuits,  and  in  return  they 
paid  a  yearly  sum  to  the  lord.  Gradually  all  the  seigneurial 
duties  came  to  be  managed  in  the  same  way.  We  shall  soon 
see  the  results  of  this  change  in  the  lord's  "  means  of  living," 
the  final  consequences  of  the  conversion  of  the  working  land- 
owner and  the  ruler  into  an  annuitant. 

Now  that  we  have  realised  in  some  detail  the  lord's  position 
in  relation  to  the  communal  movement,  it  is  very  interesting 
to  find  evidence  of  it  in  the  charter  of  one  of  the  communes. 
I  will  quote  one  which  comes  from  the  Sire  of  Coucy,  a  name 
celebrated  in  the  history  of  the  proudest  and  most  dreaded 
lords. 

"  Since,  according  to  the  general  custom  of  our  lands  of 
Coucy,  all  persons  who  come  to  these  our  lands  are  our  men 
or  women  under  the  obligations  of  mortmain  and  formariage, 
from  dislike  of  those  obligations  several  persons  have  ceased  to 
live  in  our  said  lands  :  the  which  persons,  by  going  to  live 
outside  our  said  lands  in  certain  places,  gain  their  freedom 


CHIVALRY  OR  FEUDAL  MILITARISM       321 

without  our  leave,   and  can  free  themselves  whenever  they 
please,  by  the  which  the  value  of  our  said  lands  is  much  diminished. 

"  Our  predecessors,  the  lords  of  Coucy,  were  requested  by 
the  inhabitants  to  put  an  end  to  those  obligations,  and  the  said 
inhabitants  offered  to  pay  a  fixed  and  permanent  rental,  upon 
the  which  our  said  father  found  that  it  was  greatly  to  his  profit 
to  put  an  end  to  the  aforesaid  custom  and  take  the  profit  offered 
to  him.  But  our  said  father,  before  he  could  grant  the  aforesaid 
request,  departed  this  life. 

"  From  the  time  that  we  have  become  of  age,  the  inhabit- 
ants of  our  towns  have  come  several  times  before  us  with  the 
request  that  it  may  be  our  good  will  and  pleasure  to  free  our 
said  land  and  towns — all  the  inhabitants  now  dwelling  and 
about  to  dwell  in  them — from  the  said  obligations  and  other 
personal  services  of  every  kind,  for  ever,  offering  us  from  each 
of  the  said  towns  a  fixed  rental  and  permanent  revenue  of  silver, 
for  us  and  our  successors  in  perpetuity  :  namely,  for  Coucy-la- 
Ville  and  the  inhabitants  thereof  ten  Paris  limes  (i.e.  ten 
shillings) ;  for  the  town  of  Fraisne  and  the  inhabitants  thereof 
twenty-five  sous ;  etc.  .  .  ."  Then  follow  the  names  of 
twenty-seven  towns  or  villages.  The  charter  ends  with  the 
acceptance  of  these  "  rentals  in  perpetuity,  for  the  Sire  of 
Coucy  and  his  heirs  in  perpetuity  and  for  ever."  l 

The  Sire  de  Coucy  was  right  in  thinking  that  he  was  cornered 
by  necessity,  and  was,  after  all,  choosing  the  better  path.  It 
is  none  the  less  true  that,  if  the  position  of  the  lord  was  difficult 
when  the  communes  appeared,  their  formation  made  it  far 
worse.  The  lord  then  not  only  sank  to  the  position  of  an 
officer  without  troops  for  three-quarters  of  the  year  or  even 
more,  but  saw  a  communal  militia,  or  militia  of  burgesses, 
spring  up  beside  him,  which  was  quite  ready  to  fight  without 
him  or  even  against  him.  He  no  longer  derived  any  benefit 
from  the  increasing  prosperity  of  the  towns,  which  merely  paid 
him  an  immutable  tax  ;  but,  on  the  contrary,  their  prosperity 
opposed  his  interests  by  creating  at  his  door  a  wealth  and 
power  which  moved  in  the  opposite  way  to  his  own — that  is  to 
say,  their  wealth  and  power  went  on  increasing,  while  his  own 
remained  stationary  and  were  bound,  for  that  very  reason,  to 
diminish  more  and  more. 

1  Leber,  Histoire  du  pouvoir  municipal,  p.  336. 
21 


322        CHIVALRY  OR  FEUDAL  MILITARISM 

When  all  was  reckoned,  what  still  remained  to  him  from 
the  military  system  which  was  of  any  service  to  him  ?  His 
horse,  his  armour,  and  his  men-at-arms.  And  what  did  he 
retain  of  his  manorial  possessions  ?  A  regular  pension. 

He  seems  to  have  been  specially  prepared  and  strangely 
compelled  to  become  a  knight:errant.  That  is  exactly  what 
the  feudal  lord  became  at  the  beginning  of  the  eleventh  century. 
It  is  a  very  curious,  radical  evolution,  but  there  can  be  no  doubt 
about  it.  Let  us  trace  it  out,  however. 

Though  he  had  no  regular  army,  or  practically  none,  any 
longer,  and  no  feudal  band,  yet  the  lord  none  the  less  remained, 
in  his  own  person,  a  warrior.  He  was  even  more  than  ever  a 
warrior,  for  this  reason  :  he  could  no  longer  count  upon  anyone 
but  himself,  as  a  rule.  When  he  lost  his  authority  on  every 
side,  his  bodily  strength  was  his  last  means  of  maintaining 
his  prestige  and  his  power.  His  strength  of  arm  was  a  force 
which  still  remained  his  own.  So  it  was  his  chief  business  in 
life  to  exercise  himself  in  the  use  of  arms  ;  that  was  the  basis 
of  his  education.  And  his  worth  was  reckoned  by  that,  rather 
than  by  his  titles  and  by  the  extent  of  his  domains. 

What  could  a  man  who  carried  the  development  of  his 
physical  energy  to  that  point  do  upon  his  lands,  where  every- 
thing, including  even  his  administrative  and  judicial  duties, 
was  permanently  leased  out  on  fixed  conditions  ?  He  was 
absolutely  driven  to  find  some  employment  which  would 
exercise  his  exceptional  capacity.  He  was  obliged  to  go  away 
to  some  place  where  he  might  achieve  exploits,  perform  feats  of 
valour,  and  prove  his  gallantry.  If  he  found  a  noble  object 
for  his  energy,  he  became  a  Christian  knight,  a  crusader,  a 
redresser  of  wrongs,  a  slayer  of  infidels.  If  he  aimed  at  his 
own  advancement  or  merely  a  brilliant  career,  he  became  a 
conquering  or  gallant  knight. 

This,  then,  is  the  genesis  of  that  chivalry  which  seemed 
suddenly  to  spring  out  of  the  earth  at  the  end  of  the  eleventh 
century,  and  made  such  an  unheard-of  stir  from  one  end  of 
Europe  to  the  other. 

The  change  in  the  lord's  "  means  of  living "  necessarily 
brought  with  it  a  corresponding  change  in  his  "mode  of  life." 
That  is  an  unfailing  law  of  society. 

It  remains  for  us  to  see  what  light  this  clear  analysis  of 


CHIVALRY  OR  FEUDAL  MILITARISM        323 

the  causes  of  the  feudal  evolution  in  its  period  of  deconcentration 
throws  upon  some  important  points  in  history.  Thanks  to 
what  we  now  know,  we  can  easily  see  for  ourselves  the  explana- 
tion of  what  I  shall  content  myself  by  setting  forth  shortly 
as  follows  : 

I.  We  now  understand  what  produced  the  leaders  of  those 
almost  Homeric  chivalrous  expeditions  which  began  about  the 
very  time  of  which  we  have  been  speaking — that  is,  in  the 
eleventh  century,  but  chiefly  towards  its  end,  and  which  went 
on  through  the  twelfth  and  terminated  in  the  thirteenth 
century.  The  heroes  of  those  great  expeditions  show  very 
clear  traces  of  the  phases  through  which  they  and  their  an- 
cestors passed.  From  the  traditional  estate-managing  lord 
they  inherited  a  spirit  of  independence  which  did  not  fear  any 
isolation  nor  suffer  any  authority  over  it :  that  is  sufficiently 
obvious  from  the  solitary  nature  of  many  of  their  enterprises 
and  from  the  irreconcilable  quarrels  which  often  broke  up  their 
alliances.  From  their  new  position  as  lords  with  an  income 
came  their  want  of  employment,  the  facilities  for  absenting 
themselves  from  their  estates,  the  taste  for  change  of  scene, 
and  a  curiosity  about  things  in  distant  lands.  Their  athletic 
habits  made  them  go  in  pursuit  of  feats  of  valour  or  heroic  deeds 
(gestes).  When  such  were  in  prospect  they  thought  nothing  of 
travelling  enormous  distances  along  difficult  roads,  far  from 
the  quiet  corners  where  their  manors  were  situated  :  with 
objects  such  as  these,  they  would  go  to  seek  adversaries  among 
the  Moors,  the  Saracens,  the  Byzantine  Greeks,  in  Portugal, 
Sicily,  Italy,  Greece,  Asia  Minor,  Syria,  Palestine,  Egypt,  and  on 
the  African  coast.  It  may  be  true  that  these  expeditions 
were  signs  of  the  great  expansion  of  the  race,  but  it  is  also 
certain  that  towards  the  end  of  the  eleventh  century  this 
expansion  assumed  the  character  of  a  troublesome  mania  for 
warfare.1 

In  the  quite  peculiar  way  of  life  adopted  by  the  knight, 
we  cannot  fail  to  recognise  on  the  one  hand  the  intense  develop- 
ment which  the  original  form  of  the  feudal  system  had  wrought 
in  the  personality  of  the  lord,  and  on  the  other  hand  the  want 
of  employment  to  which  he  had  been  reduced  by  the  emancipa- 
tion of  the  vassals,  the  enfranchisement  of  the  serfs,  and  the 

1  See  above,  Chap.  XII.  pp.  211,  2 1 2,  especially  the  last  paragraph. 


324        CHIVALRY  OR  FEUDAL  MILITARISM 

formation  of  the  communes,  which  drove  him  by  imperceptible 
degrees  to  a  purely  military  life.  We  must  not  omit  to  point  out 
that  the  Norman  lords  who  did  not  enter  the  feudal  system 
till  the  tenth  century  (911) — that  is  to  say,  at  the  time  of  its 
deconcentration — developed  almost  entirely  on  the  military 
lines,  owing  to  the  lack  of  examples  of  any  other  mode  of  life. 
Thus  they  were  the  first  and  most  illustrious  representatives 
of  the  militant  type.1 

2.  We  understand  why  the  tales  of  the  military  expeditions 
of  those  times  are  almost  exclusively  tales  of  glorious  personal 
exploits,  of  individual  deeds  of  valour  ;    we  understand  the 
apparently  impossible  exploits  achieved  by  a  few  knights  who 
are  able  to  conquer  an  entire  kingdom,  like  the  sons  of  Tancred 
of  Hauteville,  in  Italy  and  in  Sicily,  or  who  carve  out  princi- 
palities at  the  other  end  of  the  known  world,  as  the  crusaders 
did  in  the  Romanised  empire  of  Constantinople  :   they  arc  the 
"  records  "  of  those  knights  who  had  become  real  "  professionals 
in  chivalry." 

3.  We  understand  the  strange  contrast  there  is  between 
the  lords  of  the  first  stage  of  feudalism  and  those  of  the  second  : 
those  who  shut  themselves  up  in  their  domains  the  more  they 
triumphed  over  royalty,  devoted  themselves  to  the  improved 
cultivation  of  their  lands,  protested  against  warfare  and  distant 
expeditions,   and  made   so  little   disturbance  in  the   outside 
world  that  they  were  thought  to  be  asleep,  and  the  period  in 
which  they  lived  was  spitefully  called  by  historians  the  "  night 
of  the  Middle  Ages  "  ;  and  those  who,  on  the  contrary,  thirsted 
to  leave  home,  were  unencumbered  with  the  care  of  their 
estates,  were  devoted  to  warlike  pursuits,  were  enticed  by  their 
adventures  to  the  ends  of  Europe,  and  made  such  a  stir  in  the 
outside  world  that  they  seem  to  fill  the  history  of  their  time 
by  themselves.     We  now  understand  the  causes,  results,  and 
just  worth  of  this  evolution. 

4.  We  understand  how  it  was  that  the  second   stage  of 
feudalism  was  so  different  from  the  first,  and  originated  almost 
nothing  lasting  in  spite  of  the  extraordinary  enterprises  it 
accomplished.     The  crusaders  were  not,  like  the  members  of 
the   Frankish   and   Saxon  invading   expeditions,   agricultural 
emigrants,  whose  sole  object  was  the  sound  organisation  and  free 

1  See  above,  Chap.  XVII.  pp.  280,  2 SI. 


CHIVALRY  OR  FEUDAL  MILITARISM     325 

government  of  the  domains  they  conquered.  They  were 
professional  fighters,  warriors,  gallant  knights,  who  had  no 
idea  at  all  of  abandoning  chivalry  for  agriculture,  but  who 
contented  themselves  by  instituting  on  the  lands  they  con- 
quered the  system  of  rents  to  which  they  were  accustomed, 
without  making  any  fundamental  change  in  the  existing  method 
of  managing  property  or  in  the  methods  of  agriculture  used 
by  the  native  population,  without  changing  its  customs  or 
introducing  a  new  race  of  agriculturists  belonging  to  the 
particularist  form  of  society.  Those  of  their  compatriots  of 
inferior  rank  who  were  in  their  train  were  usually  unsettled 
persons  who  devoted  themselves  mainly  to  trade  and  did  not 
become  farmers. 

It  was  impossible  for  agricultural  emigrants  to  take  part 
in  those  long  expeditions,  for  they  were  very  different  from 
those  which  the  Franks  or  Saxons  made  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  the  Saxon  plain,  in  the  north  of  Gaul,  and  in  the  south  of 
Great  Britain.  We  need  not  dwell  upon  the  disasters  which 
attended  the  attempts  of  the  bands  of  people  who  followed  the 
first  crusades  to  reach  the  East  by  overland  routes  through 
Hungary,  or  upon  the  heavy  cost  of  the  sea-journey  in  Venetian 
or  Genoese  vessels  :  long  and  difficult  journeys  of  that  sort 
were  not  suitable  for  peasants  in  search  of  estates. 

Commercial  establishments  like  those  of  Venice  and  Genoa 
were  the  only  settlements  resulting  from  the  conquests  of  the 
crusaders  in  the  south  and  east  which  had  a  success  of  any 
duration.  The  rest  disappeared  immediately,  like  the  Latin 
empire  of  Constantinople  and  like  the  principalities  of  the 
Holy  Land ;  or,  if  it  happened  that  the  descendants  of  the 
conquerors  continued  to  live  on  the  conquered  territory  for 
some  time,  the  ancient  native  population  did  not  change  : 
that  was  the  case  at  Jerusalem,  likewise  in  Italy  and 
Sicily. 

5.  We  understand  how  the  epic  legends  which  grew  up 
around  the  memory  of  Charlemagne,  and  which  were  the 
foundation  of  the  "  Chansons  de  Geste  "  and  the  Romances 
of  Chivalry,  were  so  popular  at  that  time.  The  men  of  that 
period  had  to  go  back  to  the  great  emperor  himself  to  find 
precedents  for  their  distant  and  brilliant  campaigns,  their 
almost  fabulous  exploits.  They  tasted  the  pleasure  of  hearing 


326       CHIVALRY  OR  FEUDAL  MILITARISM 

their  own  actions  praised  when  they  listened  to  the  legendary 
stories  of  the  deeds  of  prowess  of  "  Charlemagne  and  of  Roland." 
But  what  is  still  more  significant  of  the  spirit  of  the  times  is  the 
equally  strong  infatuation  they  had  for  a  person  of  a  far  other 
type  than  theirs,  who  belonged  to  a  form  of  society  entirely 
opposed  to  that  of  the  Franks — King  Arthur,  the  Celt,  the  hero 
who  was  constantly  defeated  by  the  Saxons  and  under  whose 
leadership  the  Britons  of  England  succumbed,  but  who  was 
none  the  less  a  brilliant  warrior  of  the  Celtic  school.  We  must 
confess  that  that  generation  of  feudal  lords  began  to  show 
a  terrible  want  of  social  sense.  Whilst  the  epics  describing  the 
glory  of  Charlemagne  and  of  Arthur  nourished  among  them, 
there  was  no  literature  which  celebrated  their  immediate 
ancestors,  the  feudal  lords  who  triumphed  over  the  Romano- 
barbarian  kings,  the  true  founders  of  the  race,  of  its  prosperity 
and  its  liberties.  The  reason  is  that  such  literature  would  have 
shown  them  the  unpopular  and,  I  was  going  to  say,  the  accusing 
picture  of  a  lord  of  the  manor  busily  occupied  with  his  own 
estate,  devoted  to  the  good  of  the  country,  and  anxious  to 
remain  in  close  connection  with  the  domain  which  he  recognised 
as  the  source  of  all  his  strength. 

6.  We  understand  how  it  came  about  that  the  lords  con- 
ceived the  idea  of  holding  conventional  displays  of  deeds  of 
prowess,  wherein  they  might  exercise  themselves  in  feats  of 
chivalry,   or  make  up  for  the  expeditions  which  lost  credit 
because   they   founded   nothing   durable  :     thence   came   the 
tournaments  and  all  the  lustre  which  they  won.     For  numbers 
of  men,  chivalry  was  really  a  sport :  it  appeared  undisguisedly 
as  such  in  the  tournaments,  especially  when  the  ardour  for 
distant  expeditions  cooled.     That  was  the  final  form  it  was 
destined  to  take. 

7.  Finally,  we  understand  what  the  anger  of  the  knights 
must  have  been  when  they  discovered  that  the  military  forces 
of  the  burgess  bands  and  of  the  communal  militias  were  their 
match  in  prowess,  which  was  the  last  of  their  possessions,  and 
their  last  cause  of  pride.     There  is  no  better  explanation  of 
that   unheard-of   misdeed   which   the   knights   committed   in 
falling  upon  their  own  auxiliaries,  the  foot-soldiers,  who  had 
earned  the  honour  of  the  victory.     With  rage  in  their  hearts 
they  perceived  that  the  foot-soldiers  were  the  real  conquerors 


CHIVALRY  OR  FEUDAL  MILITARISM      327 

of   that   day,    and   that   they   themselves   were   irretrievably 
conquered. 

To  sum  up  : 

We  have  no  longer  any  cause  to  wonder  that  feudalism 
in  its  second  stage,  though  it  was  so  brilliant  and  did  such 
extraordinary  things,  founded  nothing  stable,  either  in  its  own 
country  or  outside,  in  complete  contrast  to  the  earlier  stage 
of  feudalism,  or  that  it  lost  everything  which  the  previous 
stage  had  gained.  Whilst  the  bonds  which  formerly  bound 
the  lord  to  the  estate  had  gradually  been  loosened,  no  new 
ones  were  formed,  as  we  shall  presently  see  was  the  case  with 
the  heirs  of  Norman  feudalism  in  England.  Feudalism  ended 
in  absenteeism  and  military  adventures.  It  is  easy  to  imagine 
what  became  of  the  domain  and  the  manorial  influence  while 
all  these  fine  feats  of  arms  were  being  accomplished  far  away 
only  to  be  followed  by  great  disasters.  Joinville,  who  saw  it 
with  his  own  eyes,  close  at  hand,  and  whose  evidence  cannot 
be  doubted,  describes  it  with  singular  penetration  :  "  The  King 
of  France  and  the  King  of  Navarre  were  very  urgent  that  I 
should  join  the  crusade,  whereto  I  replied  that  I  had  been 
in  the  service  of  God  and  the  king  over-seas,  and  since  my 
return  I  saw  that  the  (king's)  officers  had  so  ill-treated  my 
people  that  at  no  time  had  they  and  I  been  in  a  worse  plight ; 
and  so  I  told  them  that  if  I  wished  to  act  so  as  to  please  God, 
I  should  remain  here  to  help  and  defend  my  people." 

*  All  that  agricultural  feudalism  had  founded  was  lost  by 
military  feudalism. 

There  is  no  longer  room  for  surprise  that  during  that  time 
the  royal  power  had  every  opportunity  of  regaining  the 
upper  hand.  We  shall  watch  its  growth  in  the  next  chapter. 


CHAPTER   XXI 
THE  REVIVAL  OF  ROYAL  POWER  IN  FRANCE 

ROYAL  power  did  not  overthrow  feudalism.  But  when 
feudalism,  owing  to  the  very  nature  of  its  origin,  fell  into 
decay,  then  royalty  again  got  the  upper  hand.  There  is  no 
other  explanation  of  the  revival  of  the  royal  domination. 

How  could  the  royal  power,  which  was  reduced  to  a  mere 
cipher,  an  empty  name,  have  overthrown  feudalism,  whoso 
birth  and  growth  all  the  might  of  the  Merovingians  and  Carlo- 
vingians  had  not  been  able  to  prevent  ? 

But  when,  after  the  complete  success  of  the  struggle  he  had 
led  against  the  Romano-barbarian  system  of  administration, 
the  lord  was  gradually  stripped  of  his  feudal  army  by  the 
exemptions  to  which  the  vassals,  as  soon  as  their  position  was 
assured,  had  laid  claim ;  when  he  had  been  unconsciously 
separated  from  his  domain  by  the  successive  emancipations 
of  serfs  who  had  grown  rich,  thanks  to  the  lessons  in  agriculture 
they  received  when  he  farmed  the  estate ;  when  he  had  been 
excluded  from  the  towns  by  the  formation  of  the  communes 
which  the  revival  of  industry,  under  the  influence  of  a  general 
prosperity,  had  called  into  existence  to  fight  for  its  liberties  ; 
when  he  found  his  own  military  forces  rivalled  by  the  com- 
munal bands  or  bands  of  burgesses,  whose  numbers  continually 
increased  ;  when  he  was  obliged  to  let  out  in  fief  the  greater 
part  of  his  manorial  duties,  with  the  object  of  gaining  new 
friends  or  immediate  supplies  of  money ;  when,  under  the 
pressure  of  all  these  things,  which  naturally  sprang  one  out  of 
the  other,  he  gave  up,  in  the  end,  the  direct  management  of 
his  estates  and  the  personal  government  of  his  manor,  in  order 
to  pursue  the  fruitless  adventures  of  knight-errantry,  then — 
but  not  till  then — did  royalty  reappear  upon  the  scene. 

The  royal  power  had  no  longer  to  face  the  all-powerful, 


THE  REVIVAL  OF  ROYAL  POWER  IN  FRANCE    329 

the  genuine  feudalism  which  had  overcome  the  Merovingians 
and  Carlovingians,  but  simply  a  knighthood,  under  the  same 
name,  a  sort  of  militant  feudalism,  entirely  different  from  its 
original  form.  Therefore  we  must  not  picture  royalty  as 
drawing  its  sword  in  its  weakness,  as  boldly  attacking  the 
feudal  giant,  and  overthrowing  it  amid  the  applause  of  the 
country  it  had  delivered.  Many  books  are  filled  with  romances 
of  that  sort,  which  have  no  place  in  history. 

The  same  mistake,  though  it  is  more  serious,  is  made  with 
regard  to  royal  power  as  with  regard  to  the  communes,  when  it 
is  represented,  like  the  communes,  as  the  generating  and  con- 
trolling force  of  the  movement  which  despatched  feudalism. 
The  mistake  is  more  serious  in  this  case,  because  the  allegation 
is  still  less  true  of  royalty  than  of  the  communes.  The  first 
successful  efforts  which  royalty  made  to  emancipate  itself  in  its 
turn  from  the  feudal  system,  after  the  vassals,  the  serfs,  and 
the  artisans  had  freed  themselves,  did  not  take  place  until  the 
double  approach  of  chivalry  and  the  communes,  a  characteristic 
and  momentous  event,  was  unmistakably  evident.  The  first 
king,  indeed,  who  is  pointed  out  as  having  originated  some 
successful  movements  against  feudalism,  very  modest  though 
they  were,  was  Louis  vi.,  surnamed  the  Fat.  No  one 
will  deny  the  insignificance  of  the  reigns  of  the  Capetians  up 
till  that  time,  and  especially  the  apathy  and  fruitlessness  of 
the  long  reign  of  Philip  i.,  the  immediate  predecessor  arid 
father  of  Louis  vi.  The  latter  was  joint  ruler  in  1100; 
he  was  twenty-five,  but  he  did  not  really  become  king  till  the 
death  of  his  father  in  1108.  Now,  by  the  year  1108  a  large 
number  of  the  towns  of  the  South  had  already  been  emanci- 
pated for  some  time  :  they  were  emancipated,  as  we  saw, 
before  the  northern  towns.  And  these  northern  towns  had 
already  had  their  communes  for  a  quarter  of  a  century.  The 
commune  of  Le  Mans  was  proclaimed  as  early  as  1073,  that 
of  Cambrai  in  1076,  that  of  Noyon  in  1098  in  all  probability, 
when  Baudri  of  Sarchainville  was  elected  bishop,  a  man  who 
had  good  reason  to  be  popular,  who  was  the  declared  partisan 
of  the  communal  institution,  and  was  not  content  with  accepting 
it  in  his  episcopal  town,  but  busied  himself  in  getting  it  thoroughly 
established  there.  Then  came  the  commune  of  Saint-Quentin, 
about  1102,  and  of  Beauvais  a  few  years  before  1108.  Chivalry, 


330  THE  REVIVAL  OF 

too,  had  begun  before  this  time  to  devote  itself  to  distant  ex- 
peditions in  the  four  corners  of  the  world  :  from  Southern  Italy 
in  1037  and  Sicily  in  1058,  to  Great  Britain  in  1066  ;  and  from 
Portugal  in  1094  to  Palestine  in  1096.  Thus  the  communal 
movement  had  made  great  strides,  and  the  degeneration  of 
the  feudal  lords  was  far  advanced  when  royalty  took  the  first 
steps  towards  regaining  its  position. 

Moreover,  it  may  not  be  out  of  place  here  to  observe  that 
it  was  already  a  very  long  time  since  the  first  of  the  Capetians 
had  come  to  the  throne,  and  so  far  they  had  scarcely  made  any 
progress  at  all.  The  accession  of  the  third  race  of  kings  is 
sometimes  represented  as  a  regeneration  of  the  royal  power  after 
the  decay  of  the  Carlo vingians.  Now,  in  the  year  1108  two 
centuries — and  that  is  a  considerable  time — had  elapsed  since 
the  ancestors  of  the  Capetians  had  first  ascended  the  throne, 
beginning  with  Eudes  (887-98),  Robert  I.  (922-23),  Raoul 
(923-36) ;  and  it  was  a  hundred  and  twenty-one  years  since 
Hugh  Capet  had  remained  without  a  rival  and  had  brought 
about  the  final  enthronement  of  the  dynasty  (987). 

What  had  the  royal  power  achieved  in  all  that  time  ? 

During  its  first  century — that  is  to  say,  from  the  accession  of 
Eudes,  who  succeeded  the  Emperor  Charles  the  Fat  in  887,  up 
to  the  accession  of  Hugh  Capet  in  987 — the  royal  power  had  still 
been  regarded  with  some  distrust  by  the  feudatories  who  had 
amused  themselves  by  setting  the  family  of  the  future  Capetians 
and  that  of  the  Carlovingians  against  one  another,  with  the 
object  of  keeping  the  royal  power  in  a  state  of  powerlessness, 
and  of  hindering  the  valiant  counts  of  Paris,  the  dukes  of 
France,  from  renewing  the  attempt  of  Pepin  the  Short  and  of 
Charlemagne.  That  is  the  explanation  of  the  constant  passages 
of  arms  which  went  on  between  the  ancestors  of  the  Capetians 
and  the  Carlovingian  kings  for  the  whole  of  that  century.  It 
is  a  curious  fact  that  the  descendants  of  Charlemagne,  after 
the  loss  of  almost  all  their  possessions,  and  even  of  their  town 
of  Laon,  at  times,  should  have  been  the  sport  of  the  lords  of 
that  period,  and  that  the  dukes  of  France,  who  then  counted 
among  the  richest  feudatories,  should  have  hesitated  to  occupy 
the  throne,  through  fear  of  being  in  their  turn  obliged  to  despoil 
themselves  to  keep  the  lords,  their  rivals,  on  friendly  terms  as 
the  Carlovingians  had  been  forced  to  do.  Their  hesitation 


ROYAL  POWER  IN  FRANCE  331 

comes  out  only  too  clearly  in  history :  they  were  as  ready  to 
abandon  the  title  of  king  as  they  were  to  take  or  receive  it ; 
they  left  it  to  one  of  their  brothers-in-law,  Raoul,  Duke  of 
Burgundy ;  and  Hugh  the  Great,  the  father  of  Hugh  Capet, 
himself  revived  and  cherished  the  last  phantoms  of  the  kings 
descended  from  Charlemagne,  with  the  persistency  of  an  astute 
politician. 

After  royalty  had  been  rendered  completely  powerless  for  a 
hundred  years,  none  of  the  great  feudal  lords  felt  any  interest 
in  its  fate,  and  it  became  possible  for  Hugh  Capet  to  venture 
to  take  the  crown  without  any  of  them  making  a  disturbance 
or  molesting  him.  That  was  the  beginning  of  the  second 
century  of  the  rule  of  the  Capetians  :  they  had  spent  the  whole 
of  the  first  century  in  waiting  till  royalty  had  been  reduced  to 
a  state  of  complete  insignificance  in  order  definitely  to  take  the 
place  the  Carlovingians  had  held. 

During  the  second  century — or  rather,  for  a  hundred  and 
twenty  years,  from  the  accession  of  Hugh  Capet  in  987  till  the 
reign  of  Louis  vi.  in  1108 — the  kings  did  what  was  undoubtedly 
the  best  for  their  future  prospects  :  they  allowed  the  royal  title 
to  lapse  completely,  so  that  they  no  longer  excited  the  jealousy 
of  those  lords  who  were  undoubtedly  more  powerful  than 
themselves — as,  for  instance,  the  dukes  of  Normandy,  the  dukes 
of  Aquitaine,  and  the  counts  of  Toulouse.  Those  great  feudal 
lords,  who,  moreover,  took  little  enough  trouble  about  paying 
homage  to  the  king,  did  not  find  it  a  bad  thing  after  all  to  "  be 
dependent "  upon  someone  who  was  far  less  powerful  than 
themselves.  The  object  they  had  had  in  view  in  maintaining 
the  slothful  Carlo vingian  kings  could  still  be  realised  under 
the  modest  or  inactive  Capetians — namely,  that  they  should 
have  a  suzerainty  which  did  not  inconvenience  them  and  upon 
which  they  could  lean,  in  time  of  need,  for  their  own  advantage. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  if  the  first  Capetians  had  wanted 
to  play  the  part  of  Pepin  the  Short  or  of  Charlemagne,  and 
head  feudalism  and  keep  it  in  check,  the  history  of  the  Carlo- 
vingian  decadence  would  have  repeated  itself.  Feudalism, 
so  long  as  it  was  threatened,  would  have  kept  up  all  the  strength 
and  rigour  of  its  organisation  in  order  to  carry  on  the  struggle 
against  the  royal  power  in  which  it  had  never  been  worsted 
or  withdrawn  a  single  step.  Those  two  long  centuries  of  quiet, 


332  THE  REVIVAL  OF 

when  royal  domination  had  been  completely  nullified,  inspired 
the  feudatories  with  confidence  that  it  was  safe  to  relax  the 
bonds  between  them  and  separate  from  each  other  in  order  to 
gain  a  more  complete  freedom,  which  nothing  any  longer 
menaced.  That  is  the  reason,  which  is  too  often  overlooked, 
of  the  very  divergent  lines  taken  by  the  history  of  the  second 
and  third  dynasties.  That  is  the  key  to  the  difference  of  the 
fate  of  the  Carlo vingians  and  that  of  the  Capetians. 

Thus,  for  more  than  two  centuries  the  Capetian  kings  did 
nothing  which  could  give  them  a  claim  to  the  royal  title  :  the 
power  of  the  kings  had  remained  completely  annulled. 

We  shall  understand  the  situation  still  more  thoroughly  if  we 
examine  what  the  Capetians  did  during  those  two  centuries 
in  their  quality  of  lords  on  their  own  estates.  Their  estates  were 
those  manorial  lands  which  have  been  significantly  called 
"  lands  within  the  king's  dominions"  the  rest  of  the  kingdom 
being  officially  designated  as  "lands  outside  the  king's  dominions." 
It  was  difficult  to  describe  the  real  state  of  the  royal  power 
more  plainly  than  by  those  two  terms. 

The  Capetians  passed  through  exactly  the  same  phases 
upon  their  manorial  estates  as  the  other  lords.  They  saw  the 
feudal  bonds  relaxed  between  themselves  and  the  people  on 
their  estates.  So  that  it  is  not  at  all  surprising  to  find  that, 
at  the  time  of  the  accession  of  Louis  vi., — that  is  to  say,  at  the 
beginning  of  the  twelfth  century, — the  king  was  surrounded 
even  on  his  own  lands  by  vassals  who  were  merely  subject  to 
him  and  nothing  more.  He  could  not  even  go  away  from  Paris 
in  any  direction,  for  however  short  a  distance,  were  it  only  to 
Montmorency,  unless  it  was  their  good  pleasure  ;  and  they 
were  often  capricious  about  giving  their  consent. 

The  history  of  the  first  Capetians  in  their  quality  of  lords 
is  certainly  one  of  the  most  interesting  that  can  be  studied, 
because  it  exhibits  a  continuous  series  of  pictures  of  feudal 
life  during  that  much-ignored  period,  in  which  feudalism  went 
through  the  evolution  that  led  to  its  destruction.  It  is  the 
consecutive  and  enlightening  history  of  a  manorial  domain  and 
of  an  uninterrupted  line  of  lords  which  is  of  the  highest  value 
as  affording  information  about  a  singularly  interesting  and 
decisive  period.  The  authors  of  general  histories  of  France 
make  a  great  mistake  in  almost  entirely  excluding  from  their 


ROYAL  POWER  IN  FRANCE  333 

books  the  history  of  the  first  Capetians,  as  if  it  were  of  little 
value.  It  is  true  that  from  the  point  of  view  of  a  history  of 
kings  it  is  of  no  worth,  but  it  throws  a  myriad  of  sidelights 
upon  the  manorial  life.  It  gives  the  real  history  of  that  time 
in  the  monography  of  a  family,  by  revealing  in  one  clear  example 
the  social  system,  which  was  the  fount  of  action. 

I  have  only  room  here  to  give  a  rough  sketch  of  the  Capetians 
in  their  capacity  of  feudal  lords,  swept  along  as  they  were  by 
the  natural  movement  of  feudalism  like  everyone  else. 

The  tenth  century  is  the  period  when  the  vassals  gradually 
loosened  the  bonds  which  bound  them  to  their  suzerains. 
Now,  what  history  can  better  reflect  the  situation  than  that  of 
Hugh  Capet,  Duke  of  France,  at  the  time  when  he  took  the 
title  of  king  and  found  the  lords,  the  direct  vassals  of  the  crown, 
quietly  shut  up  in  their  independence  and  entirely  oblivious 
of  their  duties,  and  even  of  their  rights  as  great  feudatories  ? 

During  the  early  part  of  the  eleventh  century  this  inde- 
pendence and  isolation  is  manifested  in  the  thoroughly  domestic 
life  led  by  the  lord  :  now,  what  history  illustrates  that  kind  of 
life  better  than  the  history  of  Robert  the  Pious,  that  peace- 
loving,  charitable  man,  with  his  leaning  towards  the  intellectual 
and  the  mystical,  who  delighted  in  setting  everything  in  order, 
even  the  popular  ceremonies,  in  which  he  went  before  the  pro- 
cession and  caused  way  to  be  made  for  it ;  who  allowed  the 
golden  ornaments  on  his  clothing  to  be  stolen  by  the  poor, 
to  whom  he  gave  free  access ;  who  was  a  pupil  of  Gerbert  and 
loved  books,  took  them  about  with  him  on  his  journeys,  had 
a  talent  for  singing,  and  was  one  of  the  choristers  in  the  Abbey 
of  St.  Denis  ;  who  supported  monastic  reform  ;  who  caused 
criminals  to  be  prepared  for  death,  and  pardoned  them  after 
they  had  been  brought  to  repentance  ;  who,  however,  carried 
on  a  successful  war,  chiefly  against  the  Duke  of  Burgundy, 
in  order  to  maintain  his  rights  ;  who  brought  back  his  rebellious 
son  to  obedience  by  force  of  arms ;  who  was  sternly  just,  even 
to  excess  ?  Such  is  the  true  type  of  the  feudal  landowner  in 
the  first  years  of  the  eleventh  century,  who  desires  peace 
without  fearing  war,  takes  a  delight  in  the  things  of  everyday 
life,  and  only  fights  when  he  believes  it  unavoidable. 

The  second  half  of  the  eleventh  century  saw  the  awakening 
of  the  towns,  especially  in  the  South,  under  the  influence  of 


334  THE  REVIVAL  OF 

industry  and  commerce,  which  caused  the  advance  of  arts 
and  an  increase  of  luxury.  Now,  who  felt  the  effect  of  that 
movement  so  much  as  Philip  i.  ?  He  married  a  wife  from  the 
South,  and  was  straightway  overwhelmed  by  a  crowd  of 
frivolous  people,  of  Southerners,  who  had  no  knowledge  of 
anything  but  festivals,  pleasures,,  extravagant  fashions,  and 
costly  novelties  ;  and  his  careless  and  idle  life  is  characteristic 
of  the  useless  existence  to  which  the  feudal  lord  turned  as  soon 
as  freedom  and  prosperity  developed  in  the  world  around  him. 

Finally,  have  we  not  observed  how,  at  the  end  of  the  eleventh 
century,  the  lords  abandoned  an  idle  life,  which  did  not  give 
scope  for  their  energies,  and  devoted  themselves  to  chivalrous 
exploits  ?  Now,  what  represents  this  phase  of  history  better 
than  the  figure  of  Louis  vi.,  the  lover  of  sword-play,  who  was 
full  of  chivalrous  ideas  of  doing  justice,  of  redressing  wrongs 
in  all  places,  and  who  emerged  suddenly  from  the  apathy  in 
which  Philip  I.  had  slumbered  away  his  days  ? 

To  sum  up :  while  feudalism  was  disappearing,  royalty 
remained  inactive,  and  those  who  bore  the  purely  nominal 
title  of  king  were,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  mere  lords,  who  simply 
passed  through  the  series  of  evolutions  common  to  all  the 
feudatories. 

But  when  feudalism  was  thoroughly  rooted  out  and  took 
the  form  of  chivalry — that  is  to  say,  in  the  twelfth  century — 
the  royal  power  reappeared.  How  ?  This  is  the  manner 
of  it  : 

It  acquired  the  control  of  everything  which  in  turn  escaped 
from  feudalism. 

We  shall  now  see  how  that  came  about. 

The  first  act  by  which  the  Capetians  increased  their  power 
was  the  resumption  of  their  own  manorial  estate,  part  of  which 
had  slipped  from  their  hands  when  the  vassal's  bonds  became 
relaxed.  Everyone  knows — and  I  mentioned  it  above — that 
before  the  reign  of  Louis  vi.  their  position  had  become  so 
straitened  that  they  could  not  guard  the  public  peace  round 
Paris  without  coming  into  contact  with  the  sometimes  for- 
midable power  of  the  country  squires,  who  were  very  much 
inclined  to  pillage  the  convoys  of  merchants  and  the  property 
of  the  Church.  How  did  they  succeed  in  getting  out  of  that 
humiliating  position  ? 


ROYAL  POWER  IN  FRANCE  335 

They  extricated  themselves  from  it  by  putting  themselves 
at  the  head  of  the  people  who  had  been  the  first  to  emancipate 
themselves  from  feudalism :  the  inhabitants  of  the  ecclesi- 
astical domains — that  is  to  say,  of  the  lands  belonging  to  the 
bishopric  or  the  abbey.  Emancipation  had  taken  place  earlier 
in  these  lands,  where  there  was  often  more  prosperity  than 
elsewhere,  as  the  result  of  a  more  regular  administration. 
Neighbouring  lords  were  tempted  to  make  raids  upon  them 
when  driven  by  necessity.  It  was  not  permitted  the  bishops 
and  abbots  to  conduct  war  in  person  because  of  their  position 
in  the  Church,  and  they  could  not,  without  running  the  risk 
of  finding  themselves  duped  in  one  way  or  another,  intrust  the 
command  to  a  willing  lord.  They  had,  therefore,  decided  to 
intrust  a  leader,  drawn  from  the  actual  staff  of  the  bishopric 
or  abbey  and  possessing  no  feudal  title,  with  the  command  of 
their  tenants,  who  were  quite  willing  to  defend  themselves  and 
their  holdings  with  might  and  main.  A  contrivance  of  that 
sort  was  quite  outside  the  regular  feudal  organisation.  It  was 
the  first  institution  which  the  king  offered  to  protect  and 
support. 

It  was  in  this  way  that  Louis  vi.  acquired  the  leadership 
of  the  troops  of  the  Abbey  of  St.  Denis,  and  of  those  of  other 
ecclesiastical  domains  in  the  "  Isle  of  France  "  or  in  Orleanais. 
According  to  the  custom  of  the  time,  he  became  the  "  knight  " 
of  that  cause.  With  the  aid  of  these  troops,  which  were  com- 
posed of  the  sons  of  freed  serfs,  who  were  impelled  by  their 
natural  simplicity  to  contribute  more  military  service  than 
the  strict  rules  and  formal  obligations  of  feudalism  demanded, 
Louis  vi.  began  to  recall  to  submission  or  mercilessly  to  destroy 
those  of  the  vassals  on  his  manorial  estate  who  had  made 
themselves  entirely  free  or  utterly  unbearable.  This  first 
alliance  has  remained  famous  in  history  owing  to  the  custom 
which  the  kings  of  France  preserved  from  that  time  of  going 
to  St.  Denis  before  starting  on  military  expeditions  in  order 
to  take  command  of  the  army  and  raise  in  their  hand  the 
oriflamme  of  the  abbey  which  lay  on  the  altar  of  the  church. 

All  this  had  only  to  do  with  the  land  "  within  the  king's 
dominions." 

But  the  king  soon  found  means  to  take  under  his  com- 
mand another  class  of  people  in  the  lands  "  outside  his 


336  THE  REVIVAL  OF 

dominions,"  namely,  the  communes.  That  was  a  great  step  in 
advance. 

The  king  was  very  far  from  being  a  partisan  of  the  communes 
either  from  a  conviction  of  their  social  advantages  or  on 
principle,  and  took  care,  in  the  first  instance,  not  to  sanction 
any  of  them  in  any  part  of  his  domains.  He  took  the  pre- 
caution of  making  an  agreement  with  the  towns  in  his  depend- 
ency that  they  should  be  only  "  burgess  towns,"  endowed 
with  civil  liberties,  but  without  political  autonomy.  That  is 
the  first  and  not  the  only  instance  in  which  the  king  himself 
gives  the  lie  to  historians  who  have  taken  it  into  their  heads 
to  call  him  the  "  Father  of  the  Communes." 

"  Paris  never  had  a  commune,"  Augustin  Thierry  says 
decisively,  "  but  merely  corporations  of  tradesmen,  and  law 
courts  held  by  burgesses  without  any  political  powers.  Orleans 
attempted  to  form  itself  into  a  commune  under  Louis  the 
Young,  but  '  the  madness  of  those  dawdlers,'  as  it  is  expressed 
in  the  Chronicles  of  Saint  Denis,  '  who,  for  the  sake  of  the  com- 
mune, made  as  if  they  would  rebel  and  rise  against  the  crown,' 
was  punished  by  a  military  execution  and  other  stringent 
measures."  A  It  was  the  same  all  over  the  royal  domain. 

But  even  with  regard  to  the  communes  which  were  formed 
to  the  detriment  of  the  lords  in  the  lands  outside  his  dominion, 
the  king  was  very  undecided,  and  consequently  changed  his  mind 
as  to  the  attitude  it  would  be  most  advantageous  to  himself 
to  adopt  towards  them. 

In  the  first  place,  how  was  it  that  he  was  asked  to  interfere 
with  them  ? 

The  communes  seemed  like  a  great  anomaly  in  the  heart  of 
the  feudal  system.  Therefore  those  who  founded  them,  whether 
artisans  who  had  revolted  or  benevolent  lords,  felt  the  need  of 
an  official  guarantee,  and  of  making  them  formally  recognised  in- 
stitutions in  the  feudal  system — unless  it  was  a  question  of  some 
country  which  was  particularly  left  to  itself,  like  Normandy, 
which  was  almost  a  kingdom,  or  like  Flanders,  which  was 
neutralised,  so  to  speak,  between  its  allegiance  to  the  kings  of 
France  and  its  allegiance  to  the  emperors  of  Germany.  At  Noyon 
the  seigneurial  bishop  thought  it  a  good  plan  to  demand  of  his 
suzerain,  the  king,  that  he  should  ratify  the  commune  which 

1  Lettres  sur  VHistoire  de  France,  letter  xiii. 


ROYAL  POWER  IN  FRANCE  337 

he  had  generously  granted  the  town.  At  Laon,  on  the  contrary, 
it  was  the  people  of  the  commune  who  took  the  precaution,  in 
view  of  the  opposition  of  their  bishop,  of  getting  their  con- 
stitution recognised  by  the  chief  of  the  feudal  system,  the 
king.  And  so  it  happened  elsewhere,  sometimes  in  one  way, 
sometimes  in  another. 

The  king  was  thus  obliged  to  take  a  part  in  the  communal 
movement,  but  it  was  not  of  his  own  doing. 

Now,  compelled  as  he  was  to  take  a  part  in  it,  what  did  he 
do  ?  The  history  of  the  Commune  of  Laon  will  tell  us.  It  is 
one  of  the  most  celebrated,  one  of  the  communes  which  people 
are  pleased  to  quote  in  evidence  of  Louis  vi.'s  paternal 
solicitude  for  the  communes.  It  is  only  one  instance  of  a 
constantly  recurring  fact. 

The  inhabitants  of  Laon  had  bought  with  silver  the  per- 
mission of  their  bishop  to  form  a  commune.  They  sent  costly 
presents  to  the  king  at  Paris  in  order  to  obtain  his  sanction. 
There  was  no  sort  of  hesitation  in  the  answer  they  received  : 
compulsus  est  et  rex  largitione  plebeid  id  jurejurando 
firmare  was  Guibert  de  Nogent's  simple  statement  of  the 
matter. 

Three  years  after,  in  1112,  the  bishop  repented  of  his  con- 
cession, and  took  the  opportunity  of  a  visit  of  Louis  vi.  to  Laon 
to  request  him  to  withdraw  the  sanction  he  had  given  as 
suzerain.  "  The  king's  councillors  at  first  raised  some  diffi- 
culties, for  the  burgesses  of  Laon  had  got  wind  of  the  plot, 
and  had  offered  them  400  pounds  of  silver,  and  more,  if  they 
demanded  it,  if  they  would  support  the  commune.  The  bishop 
then  found  himself  obliged  to  outbid  these  offers  and  promise 
700  pounds.  Whereupon  the  king  was  prevailed  upon  to  take 
part  against  the  liberty  of  the  town.  On  the  morning  of  the 
next  day,  at  daybreak,  he  set  out  in  great  haste  with  all  his 
following."  1 

For  two  hundred  years  of  its  frequently  interrupted  ex- 
istence, the  Commune  of  Laon  did  nothing  but  buy  the  king's 
approbation  periodically  in  this  way.2 

The  Commune  of  Amiens  likewise  purchased  its  confirma- 

1  Guibert  de  Nogent,  quoted  by  Aug.  Thierry,  Lettres  sur  VHistoire  de 
France,  letter  xvi. 

2  See  Aug.  Thierry,  ibid. 

22 


338  THE  REVIVAL  OF 

tion  from  the  king  :    Ambiani,  rege  illecto  pecuniis,  fecerunt 
Communiam  (Guibert  de  Nogent).     And  so  on. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  king  simply  saw  in  the  con- 
firmation of  these  communes  an  opportunity  of  claiming  as 
suzerain  a  grant  of  money  from  the  enriched  artisans  who  were 
willing  to  pay  for  their  liberty,  just  as  if  he  were  himself  the 
direct  overlord. 

So  the  royal  power  was  not,  as  has  been  believed,  much 
extended  by  the  communes  in  this  the  first  stage  of  their  forma- 
tion :  the  only  way  in  which  they  affected  the  king  was  to 
make  his  opinion  of  some  importance  and  bring  him  financial 
support.  It  was  not  till  later  that  the  actual  officers  of  the 
communes  came  to  recruit  the  king's  military  and  administra- 
tive forces. 

However,  thanks  to  the  money  the  king  derived  from 
these  appeals  for  his  intervention  as  suzerain,  he  found  means 
to  get  a  firmer  footing  outside  his  own  domain  :  he  enrolled 
another  group  of  people  who  had  no  regular  place  in  the  feudal 
system  :  I  mean  the  "  bands  of  highwaymen." 

It  was  with  their  help  that  King  Philip  Augustus  took 
possession  of  Normandy  after  having,  as  nominal  suzerain, 
announced  to  John  Lackland,  King  of  England,  his  intention 
of  confiscating  it.  Attention  must  be  drawn  to  the  fact 
that  the  king's  suzerainty  would  have  remained  as  practically 
ineffective  as  it  had  been  in  the  past,  had  he  not  been  able  to 
employ  in  succession  the  means  of  execution  which  escaped 
from  the  feudal  system  in  its  period  of  dissolution. 

"At  the  end  of  the  twelfth  century,"  says  Boutaric,  professor 
at  the  ficole  des  Chartes,  "  highwaymen  acquired  a  new  import- 
ance and  played  a  great  part  in  the  military  operations  which 
distinguished  the  reign  of  Philip  Augustus.  The  king  hired  them 
for  his  war  against  the  King  of  England.  It  is  recorded  in 
history  how  a  famous  chief  named  Cadoc  did  him  good  service. 
Cadoc's  band  was  the  first  to  make  its  way  into  Chateau 
Gaillard.  It  subsequently  took  possession  of  the  town  of 
Angers.  But,  under  a  man  of  the  character  of  Philip  Augustus, 
the  highwaymen  were  obliged  to  give  up  their  wild  habits  :  they 
became  brave  soldiers  who  were  kept  under  control  by  stern 
discipline  and  were  content  with  the  rich  pay  they  received."  l 

1  Institutions  militaires,  bk.  iv.  chap.  iv.  p.  242. 


ROYAL  POWER  IN  FRANCE  339 

By  this  conquest  of  Normandy,  which  was  accompanied  by 
that  of  Maine,  Anjou,  Touraine,  and  Poitou,  the  Capetian  kings 
actually  became  the  most  powerful  persons  in  France.  It  was 
then  that  royalty,  in  the  person  of  Philip  Augustus,  reassumed 
the  power  to  which  the  Carlovingians  had  aspired,  the  domina- 
tion of  the  lords,  the  government  of  the  kingdom.  But  Philip 
Augustus  had  no  longer  to  struggle  like  Pepin  and  Charlemagne 
against  feudalism  in  its  vigour  :  it  was  already  a  century  and 
a  half  since  chivalry  had  absorbed  all  the  nobility.  It  was 
disorganised  by  its  adventures,  ruined  by  its  distant  expeditions, 
and  decimated  by  its  deeds  of  valour. 

So  the  aim  pursued  by  the  king  was,  not  to  reorganise 
the  lords  in  any  way  he  could,  but  to  replace  them  in  all  places 
where  he  could  by  men  drawn  from  the  population  that  was 
growing  up  in  the  towns,  which  provided  him  with  a  new 
class  quite  outside  the  organisation  of  the  estate  and  the  feudal 
system,  a  class  which  was  very  ambitious,  very  much  flattered 
at  being  promoted  by  the  king,  the  highest  representative  of 
feudalism  at  that  time  ;  and  lastly,  owing  to  their  municipal  and 
communal  habits,  very  much  prone  to  return  to  communal 
ideas  and  communal  ways. 

The  population  of  the  towns  furnished  the  king  with  soldiers 
and  officials,  the  two  great  categories  of  agents  which  were  the 
effective  instruments  of  his  power. 

His  first  step  was  to  get  the  towns  under  his  control. 

He  took  care  at  first  not  to  abolish  the  communes  in  places 
where  he  came  across  them  outside  his  ancient  domain,  but 
he  generally  doubled  the  dues  they  had  promised  to  the  pre- 
ceding lords  ; 1  and  when  they  could  not  pay,  he  suppressed 
them,  and  brought  the  inhabitants  under  the  royal  administra- 
tion. It  was  an  easy  thing  to  do,  as  in  such  cases  the  towns 
were  not  rich  and  flourishing,  and  the  king  had  become  strong 
owing  to  his  conquests  in  the  interior.  The  king  also  showed 
a  great  deal  of  dexterity  in  profiting  by  the  dissensions  which 
were  sure  to  occur  in  the  communal  government  of  the  freed 
towns  to  make  one  of  the  parties  engaged  in  the  struggle  come 
to  his  support,  by  granting  it  honours  and  material  advantages, 
and  help  him  in  suppressing  the  commune  ;  he  then  placed  his 
own  agents  at  the  head  of  the  town.2 

1  See  Leber,  Histoire  du  pouvoir  municipal,  p.  183.  8  Ibid.  p.  375. 


340  THE  REVIVAL  OF 

Thus,  from  the  time  of  Philip  Augustus,  the  communes 
began  to  disappear  in  great  numbers,  and  at  any  rate  were  not 
usually  recognised,  unless  at  the  cost  of  a  great  increase  in 
their  taxes  and  dues. 

Among  the  duties  which  the  communes  were  bound  to 
accept — and  which  they  accepted,  it  must  be  said,  with  rather 
unaccountable  pride — was  the  obligation  to  send  their  militias 
to  the  king's  army. 

We  know  how  well  those  militias  served  at  Bouvines.  But 
though  they  were  victorious,  they  showed  that  they  were  very 
inexperienced.  That  was  remedied  by  giving  them  the  ordinary 
military  training — practising  them  in  shooting  with  the  bow, 
for  example — and  by  choosing  from  among  them  the  finest  men 
and  those  best  skilled  in  fighting  to  form  picked  bodies  or 
"  companies."  The  king  supplied  these  picked  bands  with 
officers.  Except  at  times  set  aside  for  practice,  or  in  cases  of 
mobilisation,  he  had  the  arms  kept  under  the  charge  of  the 
officers,  for  fear,  it  was  said,  that  the  artisans  should  pawn  them 
one  day  for  purposes  of  trade. 

With  the  help  of  troops,  with  the  pecuniary  aid  he  drew 
from  the  towns  and  from  the  increasing  amount  of  land  which 
he  could  really  consider  under  his  rule,  the  king  defeated  the 
lords  one  after  the  other,  as  favourable  opportunities  occurred. 

He  had  one  mode  of  dealing  with  the  lords  which  throws 
some  light  on  history.  It  is  often  said  :  "  The  king  declared 
that  henceforth  the  lords  should  do  this  or  that ;  might  no 
longer  do  this  or  that — for  instance,  recognise  the  communes, 
create  burgesses  without  the  king's  consent ;  might  not  fight 
against  each  other  ;  nor  levy  new  taxes  upon  their  people,  etc." 
And  one  asks  how  the  lords  came  to  obey.  It  is  evident  that 
they  did  not  obey  from  a  spirit  of  submission.  But,  in  order 
to  issue  these  prospective  laws,  the  king  gathered  round  him 
those  lords  whom  he  had  been  able  to  win  to  his  side  in  one 
way  or  another,  and  those  who  were  naturally  in  sympathy 
with  his  projects.  They  carried  out  of  their  own  accord 
what  they  decided  at  the  king's  council.  But  the  king  pro- 
ceeded with  the  introduction  of  the  new  custom  by  imposing 
it  by  degrees  on  the  other  lords  by  force  of  arms  according 
as  favourable  opportunities  occurred. 

At  these  impromptu  meetings  of  the  lords,  which  were  sum- 


ROYAL  POWER  IN  FRANCE  341 

moned  and  presided  over  by  the  king,  men  accustomed  to 
business,  usually  from  among  the  rich  burgesses  of  the  towns, 
were  called  in  to  give  their  advice  upon  what  was  the  best 
edict  to  be  issued  and  what  was  the  best  organisation  to  adopt 
in  view  of  the  end  desired.  They  were  there  in  the  position 
of  privy-councillors. 

Little  by  little,  the  king  and  those  lords  who  acquiesced  in 
the  king's  intentions  abandoned  to  these  men  the  task  of 
discussing  by  themselves  and  of  deciding  the  measures  to  be 
adopted  for  attaining  the  object  which  had  been  pointed  out 
to  them.  That  was  the  origin  of  the  king's  councillors,  the 
legists,  and  the  parliaments. 

The  lords  willingly  allowed  individual  emissaries  to  be 
sent  by  the  king  to  their  estates  to  represent  this  body  of 
lawyers  and  to  commute  those  sentences  pronounced  by  the 
seigneurial  judges  which  were  not  in  accordance  with  the 
decisions  made  by  this  central  body  of  magistrates.  That 
was  the  origin  of  the  royal  bailiffs  and  royal  provosts,  who 
before  long  were  sent  at  the  command  of  the  king  even 
to  the  lands  of  lords  who  did  not  wish  to  have  them. 
This  centralised  organisation  of  justice,  which  was  supported 
by  the  king's  military  forces,  was  not  long  in  absorbing  the 
whole  judicial  administration  and  in  gradually  excluding  from 
the  field  the  manorial  law  courts,  which,  by  the  way,  it  must 
not  be  forgotten  hardly  belonged  directly  to  the  lords  any 
more,  but  were  generally  let  out  in  fief. 

The  distinctive  feature  of  the  two  offices  created  by  the 
king — that  of  the  officer  of  militia  and  of  the  legal  coun- 
cillor— was  that  they  assumed  a  purely  personal  character.  In 
the  case  of  the  militia  and  the  companies  of  burgesses,  the 
military  offices  remained  transitory,  were  attached  to  no  land, 
no  estate,  no  line  of  heirs — an  arrangement  which  was  in  direct 
opposition  to  the  feudal  organisation.  It  was  the  same  with 
the  judicial  and  administrative  offices.  From  the  very  begin- 
ning it  was  an  established  rule  that  the  royal  bailiffs,  royal 
provosts,  and  other  functionaries  of  the  same  kind,  should 
never  be  chosen  from  among  the  people  of  the  place  where  they 
had  to  perform  their  duties,  and  that  they  should  not  occupy 
the  same  post  for  more  than  three  years.  I  will  quote  a  char- 
acteristic example  of  the  precautions  that  were  taken  :  "  No 


342    THE  REVIVAL  OF  ROYAL  POWER  IN  FRANCE 

one  shall  be  provost  or  bailiff  of  the  said  town  (Montauban) 
or  lieutenant  thereof,  who  is  a  native  of  the  said  place  or  its 
dependencies,  or  who  has  taken  a  wife  thereof,  or  else  is  an 
inhabitant  thereof.  (In  the  year  1332.)  " 

What  a  change  from  the  time  when  the  Frankish  landlords 
assembled  to  obtain  a  decree  from  the  Merovingians  that  no 
judge  should  be  chosen  from  people  outside  the  country  who 
possessed  no  property  therein  ! 

So  we  have  the  king  side  by  side  with  a  rich  and  intelligent 
town  population,  who  were  reconciled  to  the  communal  idea 
and  were  trained  to  commercial  speculations  and  industry. 
We  find  that  royalty  has  reverted  to  something  very  much  like 
'the  military  and  administrative  system  of  the  Merovingians, 
to  a  government  entirely  in  the  king's  hands,  composed  of 
persons  whom  he  takes  or  leaves  according  as  he  thinks  they 
may  be  of  use,  but  who  are  nothing  in  themselves,  and  in  nowise 
depend  on  the  possession  and  development  of  an  estate. 

Further  on  we  shall  resume  this  history  of  the^oyal  power. 
We  shall  leave  off  for  the  present  in  the  ^fourteenth  century 
with  Philip  the  Fair,  whose  character  is  well  known  and  is 
highly  typical  of  the  times. 

It  remains  for  us  to  explain  how  it  was  impossible  for  the 
serfs  who  had  been  emancipated  upon  their  estates  to  react 
against  the  movement  towards  the  centralisation  of  the 
administration  and  the  domination  of  the  king,  which  were 
both  fundamentally  dependent  upon  the  recruits  provided  by 
the  town  populations. 

But  before  going  so  far — that  is,  before  reaching  modern 
times — we  must  gain  some  knowledge  of  a  large  portion  of  the 
Frankish  and  feudal  lands  that  we  have  passed  by  :  our  next 
chapter  will  deal  with  feudalism  in  Germany. 


CHAPTEK  XXII 

THE  NEW  GERMANISATION  OF  CENTRAL  EUROPE 
IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 

"VTOW  that  we  have  traced  the  history  of  the  particularist 
JLAI  form  of  society  in  Great  Britain  and  in  France  up  to 
the  decadence  of  feudalism,  let  us  follow  it  in  Germany  during 
the  same  period. 

Central  Europe  —  that  is  to  say,  the  vast  quadrilateral 
bounded  by  the  Baltic, the  Vistula,  the  Danube,and  the  Rhine — 
was  all  but  emptied  of  all  the  Germanic  peoples  by  the  pressure 
of  the  great  migratory  movement  known  as  the  invasion  of 
the  barbarians.1  They  pressed  on,  tribe  upon  tribe,  to  the 
Roman  lands  beyond  the  Danube  and  the  Rhine,  so  that  at 
the  beginning  of  the  sixth  century  no  Germans  were  left  in 
the  centre  of  Europe  except  the  five  following  groups  of 
peoples : 2 

1.  The  Saxons  of  the  Saxon  plain  :  they  were,  as  we  know, 
the  Neo-Germans  from  the  steep  fiords  of  Norway.  The  Franks 
and  the  Saxons  of  Britain  came  from  among  them.  They 
belonged  to  the  particularist  form  of  society.  They  were 
firmly  fixed  to  the  land ;  they  sent  out  emigrants,  but  did 
not  remove  in  a  body  :  they  won  fresh  land  without  ^aban- 
doning their  own.  This  was  the  characteristic  which 
distinguished  them  from  the  other  peoples  of  Central  Europe 
at  the  time  of  the  great  barbarian  invasion,  and  which  was 
due  to  the  fact  that  their  peculiar  method  of  family  organi- 
sation gave  rise  directly  to  a  peculiar  method  of  expansion  in 
the  race. 

Their  own  territory  was  the  flat  land  called  by  their  name, 

1  See  Attaa,  Vidal-Lablache,  map  18a. 

2  The  following  points  will  be  easily  grasped  with  the  help  of  the  three 
maps,  I8d,  25,  and  97e  in  Atlas,  Vidal-Lablache  (Armand  Colin,  Paris). 

343 


344        NEW  GERMANISATION  OF  CENTRAL 

the  Saxon  plain,  the  centre  of  which  was  formed  by  the  lower 
basin  of  the  Weser.  The  land  was  bounded  on  the  north  by 
the  North  Sea  ;  on  the  west  by  the  marshes  of  Bourtange, 
the  present  frontier  of  Holland,  by  the  Rhine  and  its  tribu- 
tary the  Sieg  near  Bonn ;  on  the  south  by  the  mountain 
chain  in  the  upper  basin  of  the  Weser  ;  lastly,  on  the  east 
by  the  Unstrut,  a  tributary  of  the  Saale,  by  the  Saale,  which 
is  a  tributary  of  the  Elbe,  and  by  the  Elbe  itself.1 

The    Saxons,  then,  occupied    the   north-eastern   corner   of 
Central  Europe. 

2.  The  Eastern  Franks,  later  known  as  the  Franconians  : 
they  were  the  Franks  who  settled  in  the  valley  of  the  Main  as 
well  as  in  Gaul.2 

3.  The  Akmanni :    they  were  a  chance  medley,  a  fusion, 
a  confederation  if  you  will,  of  Old  Germans.     The  Suevi,  from 
whom  came  the  name  of  Swabians,  formed  the  predominating 
element  of  the  group,  which  therefore  bore  the  name  of  Alemanni 
or  Swabians  at  different  times,  in  a  very  confusing  manner. 
In  accordance  with  the  strange  destiny  which  haunts  historical 
and  geographical  names,  the.  first  of  these  names  has  been 
extended  so  as  to  include  all  the  peoples  of  Central  Europe  :  the 
Germans  (Allemands).     The  Suevi  were,  it  will  be  remembered, 
the  principal  tribe  among  the  Old  Germans  of  the  Baltic  plain  : 
they  occupied  the  whole  area  between  the  Elbe  and  the  Oder, 
the  importance  of  which  is  proved  more  markedly  than  ever 
by  the  fact  that  Berlin  is  situated  at  its  centre.3    According 
to  Caesar,  they  were  the  most  warlike  of  all  the  inhabitants 
of   Germany :    "  Suevorum  gens  est   longe  bellicosissima  Ger- 
manorum  omnium"  4     It  was  not  long  before  they  entered 
the  stream  of  the  great  invasion  :    they  formed  part  of  the 
first  body  of  Gau^s  which  crossed  the  Rhine  and  poured  in 
upon  Gaul   on   December   31,  406.     They  pushed   as  far  as 
Spain,  where  they  made  an  ephemeral  kingdom  in  the  north- 
west, in  the  region  now  known  as  Galicia,  which  is,  however, 
very  much  larger  at  the  present  day.     They  did  not  all  leave 
Central  Europe,   however,   for  they  were  incomparably  the 
largest  settlement  of  Germans  ;    they  occupied,  it  is  said,  a 
hundred  villages,  from  each  of  which  a  thousand  men  were 

1  See  map  94,  Atlas,  Vidal-Lablache.  2  See  maps  21  and  25,  ibid. 

3  See  above,  Chap.  I.  p.  6.  *  De  Bello  Gallico,  iv.  1. 


EUROPE  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  345 

sent  out  to  war  every  year  :  gens  longe  maxima  Germanorum 
omnium,  hi  centum  pagos  habere  dicuntur,  ex  quibus  quotannis 
singula  millia  armatorum  bellandi  causa  ex  finibus  educunt* 
Those  of  the  Swabian  tribe  who  remained  behind  in  Germany 
reinforced  the  tribes  which  had  been  established  for  a  long 
time  near  the  Rhine,  and  they  all  took  a  name  which  they  had 
already  made  famous,  that  of  Alemanni,  meaning  in  Teutonic 
wholly  men.  This  band  of  Alemanni  made  a  fresh  attempt 
to  cross  the  Rhine.  But  it  was  too  late  :  no  sooner  had  they 
crossed  the  river  than  they  saw  coming  out  against  them  the 
Franks  of  Clovis,  who  had  made  themselves  masters  of  Gaul, 
and,  like  true  particularists,  had  no  intention  of  surrendering 
their  land.  The  fight  took  place  at  Tolbiac  (Zulpich,  to  the 
west  of  Bonn)  in  495.  The  issue  is  well  known.  The  Alemanni 
had  to  terminate  their  migrations  at  the  right  bank  of  the 
Rhine.  Had  they  not  suffered  that  celebrated  defeat,  they 
too  would  have  emptied  Germany.  The  Franks  followed  up 
their  victory,  and  pushed  them  to  the  south  of  the  valley  of 
the  Main,  which  was  already  in  the  hands  of  the  Franks.  That 
valley  was  afterwards  given  the  name  of  Franconia,  which 
has  continued  to  this  day. 

So  the  Alemanni  or  Swabians  found  themselves  restricted 
to  the  land  called  Franconia,  on  the  right  bank  of  the  Rhine, 
south  of  the  Main  valley,  which  remained  in  the  hands  of  the 
Franks.  They  were  made  tributary  tribes.  Roughly  speaking, 
their  land  included  what  is  now  the  duchy  of  Baden,  Wiirtem- 
berg,  and  the  eastern  part  of  Bavaria,  which  is  still  called 
Swabia.2  It  stretched  from  the  Rhine  to  the  Lech,  a  river  in 
Augsburg,  which  is  a  tributary  of  the  Danube,  and  embraced 
the  valley  of  the  Neckar  and  that  of  the  Upper  Danube. 

Thus  the  Alemanni  occupied  the  south-west  corner  of  Central 
Europe. 

I  said  that  the  north-west  was  occupied  by  the  Saxons. 
In  the  space  between  these  two  extremes,  but  north  of  the 
valley  of  the  Main,  where  lived  the  Franks  or  Franconians, 
dwelled  the  Thuringians. 

4.  The  Thuringians  were  a  medley  of  Old  Germans  who 
had  fled  to  the  mountainous  country  about  the  sources  of  the 

1  De  Bdlo  Gallico,  iv.  1 . 

2  See  maps  97  and  98,  Atlas,  Vidal-Lablache. 


346        NEW  GERMANISATION  OF  CENTRAL 

Weser,  between  the  Saxon  plain  and  the  valley  of  the  Main, 
or  Franconia.  Towards  the  beginning  of  the  sixth  century 
they  were  joined  by  a  contingent  of  Angles,  who,  instead  of 
crossing  over  to  Great  Britain,  had  followed  the  general  southerly 
movement,  and  by  the  Wagrians,  a  tribe  that  lived  close  to 
the  Angles  in  Schleswig-Holstein.1  In  an  intestine  quarrel 
the  Thuringians  called  in  the  help  of  Theodoric,  or  Thierry  i., 
son  of  Clovis,  but  when  they  refused  to  give  him  the  share 
of  the  booty  they  had  promised,  Thuringia  was  reduced 
to  the  position  of  a  tributary  state  by  the  arms  of  the 
Franks. 

It  thus  formed  a  kind  of  "  buffer  state  "  between  the  Franks 
of  the  Main  valley  and  the  Saxons  of  the  Saxon  plain.  It 
is  represented  to-day  by  the  countries  of  Hesse  and  Thuringia.2 

5.  The  Bavarians  :  they  were  another  medley  of  Old 
Germans,  the  remains,  no  doubt,  of  those  who  had  gone  south 
one  after  the  other  into  Bavaria  in  order  to  plunge  into  Roman 
territory  either  on  the  Gaulish  or  the  Italian  side  :  in  fact, 
the  last  halting-place  on  the  great  road  formed  by  the  upper 
basin  of  the  Danube,  which  is  the  boundary  of  both  countries, 
was  in  that  region.  These  Old  Germans  who  had  mingled 
with  or  taken  the  place  of  an  old  Celtic  population,  a  remnant 
of  the  Boians,  probably  borrowed  from  them  their  collective 
name  of  Boioarii  or  Baiuarii,  Bavarians.  When  the  Franks 
were  strengthening  their  settlement  in  Franconia  they  made 
them  into  a  separate  body  in  Bavaria,  to  the  east  of  the  valley 
of  the  Main,  and  made  them  tributaries,  as  they  had  done  in 
the  case  of  the  Alemanni  and  the  Thuringians. 

Thus  the  Bavarians  remained  on  both  banks  of  the  Upper 
Danube  from  the  Lech,  upon  which  Augsburg  is  situated,  to 
the  Inn,  where  Passau  stands.  That  country  is  now  called 
the  Upper  Palatinate  of  Bavaria,  Lower  Bavaria,  and  Upper 
Bavaria.3 

In  short,  the  only  Germans  who  were  left  in  Central  Europe 

1  The  original  country  of  the  Angles,  Angeln,  was  the  large  round  pro- 
montory to  the  north  of  the  present  town  of  Schleswig,  and  the  original 
country  of  the  Wagrians  was  Wagria,  in  the  great  promontory  stretching  to 
the  east  of  Kiel.     See  maps  98  and  99  in  Atlas,  Vidal-Lablache,  or,  better 
still,  map  28  in  Hachette's  Atlas  Manuel,  1883. 

2  See  map  97e,  Atlas,  Vidal-Lablache. 

3  See  maps  98  and^99,  ibid. 


EUROPE  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  347 

at  the  beginning  of  the  sixth  century,  at  the  end  of  the  great 
invasion  of  the  barbarians,  were  the  following  : 

I.  Neo-Germans,  belonging  to  the  particularist  forma- 
tion :    (1)  the  Saxons,  in  the  Saxon  plain  ;    (2)  the 
eastern  Franks,  afterwards  called  Franconians,  in  the 
valley  of  the  Main. 

II.  Old  Germans,  belonging  to  the  communal  formation  : 
(1)  the  Alemanni  or  Swabians,  south  of  the  valley  of 
the  Main  ;   (2)  the  Thuringians,  north  of  the  valley  of 
the  Main  and  between  it  and  the  Saxon  plain  ;  (3)  the 
Bavarians,  to  the  east  of  the  valley  of  the  Main  in  the 
upper  basin  of  the  Danube,  from  the  Lech  to  the  Inn. 

The  Saxons  and  the  Franks  had  remained  where  they  were 
owing  to  their  power  of  holding  firmly  to  the  soil. 

The  Alemanni,  Thuringians,  and  Bavarians  had  been 
checked  and  restricted  by  the  Franks. 

It  is  easy  to  get  an  idea  of  the  limits  of  the  areas  described 
above,  if  it  is  realised  that  all  the  Germanic  tribes,  Neo-Germans 
and  Old  Germans,  were  shut  in  by  the  following  boundaries  : 
on  the  north,  the  North  Sea  ;  on  the  west,  the  Rhine  ;  on  the 
east,  the  Elbe,  and  the  Saale,  which  flows  into  it  south  of  Magde- 
burg, the  mountains  of  Bohemia  (the  Bohmer  Wald),  and  the 
Inn,  which  flows  into  the  Danube  at  Passau  ;  on  the  south, 
the  Alps,  which  rejoin  the  Rhine.1 

In  short,  all  Germany  was  then  comprised  between  two 
lines  :  the  line  of  the  Rhine,  and  a  line  drawn  from  the  Elbe 
and  the  Saale  to  the  Alps.  How  much  it  had  been  narrowed 
since  the  period  before  the  great  invasion  of  the  barbarians  ! 
How  different  from  the  time  when  Germany  stretched  as  far 
as  the  Vistula  at  the  very  least. 

Who,  then,  had  come  to  fill  up  the  great  space  which  the 
Germans  had  evacuated  between  the  Elbe  and  the  Saale  and 
the  Vistula,  and  between  the  Baltic  and  the  Balkans  ?  The 
Slavs  and  Fins — that  is  to  say,  patriarchal  tribes. 

The  Slavs  occupied  the  whole  area  except  the  middle  and 
lower  basin  of  the  Danube,  which  was  filled  by  relays  of  Fins 
under  the  names  of  Huns,  Avars,  and  Hungarians.  The  Slavs 
carried  on  a  very  elementary  kind  of  farming,  but  the  Fins 
were  purely  nomadic — facts  which  account  in  some  degree 
1  See  map  94,  Atlas,  Vidal-Lablache. 


348        NEW  GERMANISATION  OF  CENTRAL 

for  the  way  in  which  they  naturally  divided  those  two  ancient 
districts  of  Germany  between  them. 

At  the  time  of  the  Merovingians,  these  Slavs  and  Fins,  who 
had  already  made  their  way  into  Germany,  were  not  tributaries 
of  the  Franks,  but  were  merely  neighbours  of  the  Alemanni, 
Bavarians,  and  Thuringians,  who  were  tributaries  of  the  Franks. 
They  were  also  neighbours  of  the  Saxons,  who  were  independent 
of  the  Franks.1 

Such  was  the  state  of  Central  Europe  from  the  end  of  the 
invasion  of  the  barbarians  till  the  time  of  Charlemagne.  How 
far  behind  Gaul,  which  had  almost  reached  the  zenith  of 
feudalism  under  Charlemagne  !  It  ought  also  to  be  remarked 
that  the  tributaries  of  the  Franks  who  had  been  kept  in  a  state 
of  dependence  by  the  royal  power,  and  not  by  Frankish  colonisa- 
tion, regained  their  independence  at  the  time  of  the  Merovingian 
decadence. 

The  backwardness  of  Central  Europe  relatively  to  Gaul 
or  France,  is  a  point  which  is  characteristic  of  the  differences 
in  their  history. 

We  shall  now  consider  ltaj£sa]j;s. 

As  soon  as  the  German  tribes  of  Central  Europe  ceased  to 
feel  the  effects  of  the  royal  power  under  the  decadent  Mero- 
vingians, they  began  to  menace  Gaul.  Thence  arose  the  constant 
wars  which  Charlemagne  had  to  wage  before  he  could  repair 
the  work  of  the  Merovingians,  and  before  he  could,  with  the 
help  of  the  great  feudal  barons,  extend  it  and  make  it  far  stronger 
than  before. 

He  suppressed  the  national  chiefs  and  the  autonomous 
political  organisations  of  the  Old  Germans,  the  Alemanni, 
Thuringians,  and  Bavarians,  and  set  a  count  over  each  pagus 
(in  Latin)  or  gau  (in  Teutonic),  which  corresponds  with  the 
somewhat  small  geographical  and  ethnographical  areas  which 
are  still  called  to-day  in  everyday  language  "pays "or  "canton," 
such  as  the  Pays  de  Caux  or  the  Pays  d'Auge,  the  Canton 
des  Grisons  or  the  Canton  de  Berne.  The  pagi  that  were 
considered  too  small  were  joined  together  ;  others  that  were  too 
large  were  divided.  Infect,  the  Merovingian  system  of  organisa- 
tion was  applied  to  the  country,  by  which  the  count,  who  was 
appointed  directly  by  the  king  but  was  subject  to  dismissal, 
1  See  maps  22  and  23,  Atlas,  Vidal-Lablache. 


EUROPE  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  349 

was  placed  over  each  pagus.  But  thereby  the  Old  Germans 
who  remained  in  Germany  became  subjects  instead  of  being 
merely  tributaries.  Their  country  was  annexed  to  the  kingdom 
of  France. 

Now,  it  was  about  three  hundred  years  since  that  system 
had  been  applied  to  Gaul  by  the  Merovingians.  Thus,  when 
Central  Europe  reached  this  new  stage  in  its  social  advance* 
it  was  three  hundred  years  behind  France  as  regards  its  historical 
development^ 

As  for  the  Slavs  and  Fins  who  had  come  into  Old  Germany, 
Charlemagne  imposed  a  tax  upon  them,  at  any  rate  upon  those 
that  were  nearest :  the  Slavs  as  far  as  the  Oder,  the  Fins  or 
Avars  as  far  as  the  Theiss.  So  from  ordinary  neighbours  they 
became  tributaries. 

As  for  the  Saxons  who  began  to  make  armed  invasions 
into  Frankish  territory,  Charlemagne  made  valiant  efforts  to 
hold  them  in  check  by  defeating  them  in  battle  and  making 
them  swear  oaths  to  maintain  peace,  but  in  the  end  he  resorted 
to  a  method  of  extermination  on  a  terrific  scale,  either  executing 
the  people  en  masse,  or  transplanting  them  systematically  to 
different  parts  of  his  empire.  In  this  way  the  population  of 
the  Saxon  plain  was  extraordinarily  reduced,  and  Charlemagne 
organised  it  under  counts,  as  he  had  done  in  the  case  of  the 
Old  Germans,  with  this  very  curious  difference,  that  the  new 
"  counties  "  were  mainly  ecclesiastical — that  is  to  say,  were 
intrusted  specially  to  bishops.  Bishops  in  that  position  had 
a  double  advantage  over  the  ordinary  counts.  On  the  one 
hand,  their  authority  was  coupled  with  their  religious  function 
and  seemed  to  emanate  from  it :  for  that  reason  it  was  more 
acceptable  than  that  of  the  secular  Frankish  officials  in  the 
eyes  of  the  Saxons  who  had  been  independent  till  then.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  bishoprics  could  not  be  inherited,  and  the 
royal  power  intervened  to  choose  the  bishop  every  time  a  see 
was  vacant :  by  that  means  Charlemagne  had  the  ultimate 
management  of  the  affairs  of  government  much  more  under 
his  control,  and  hadjess_  cause  to  fear  the  return  of  the  Saxons 
tg  independence  than  if  they  had  been  governed  by  a  line  of 
counts  who  inherited  their  offices  and  were  always  striving  to 
emancipate  themselves.  Thus  the  Saxons  became  subjects 
after  having  beenjsimple  neighbours.^ 


350        NEW  GERMANISATION  OF  CENTRAL 

In  short,  at  the  time  of  Charlemagne,  the  Germans  (Old 
Germans  and  Neo-Germans)  of  Central  Europe  were  all  under 
the  government  of  counts  or  of  bishops,  who  were  agents  for 
the  royal  power  as  under  the  Merovingian  system  of  govern- 
ment. In  the  counties  called  "  Marches " — that  is  to  say, 
frontiers,  because  they  bordered  .upon  the  tributary  states  of 
the  Slavs  or  Fins — the  counts  bore  the  title  of  margrave  or 
marquis.  In  the  interior  counties  they  were  called  landgraves 
or  plain  counts.  It  was  only  in  exceptional  cases  that  dukes 
were  created  who  were  put  in  authority  over  several  counts, 
bishops,  or  marquisses. 

Thus  at  the  beginning  of  the  Carlo vingi an  epoch  the 
Germans  that  still  remained  in  Germany,  not  counting  the 
Franks  in  the  valley  of  the  Main,  had  only  just  begun  to  come 
under  the  Merovingian  system  of  government ;  and  it  was  just 
at  that  time  that  the  Merovingians  and  their  mode  of  govern- 
ment were  disappearing  from  Gaul :  which  givesjus  a  further 
idea  oJLthe  backwardness^  ofjthe  ^Germans  as  compared  with 
tliejj!rjtnks7^1ts"ibr  the  branch  of  The  Slavs  and  Fins  who  filled 
the  empty  space  left  by  the  Germans  between  the  Elbe  and 
the  Saale  on  the  one  hand  and  the  Oder  and  the  Theiss  on  the 
other,  they  were  as  yet  only  bound  to  pay  tribute  ;  but  Charle- 
magne was  the  very  first  man  to  unite  all  the  Old  Germans 
and  Neo-Germans  that  still  remained  beyond  the  Rhine  under 
the  same  political  organisation,  though  he  did  not  conquer  the 
whole  of  the  ancient  land  of  the  Germans. 

It  is  easy  to  realise  the  inevitable  effect  of  the  decadence  of 
the  Carlo vingians  upon  the  Germans  beyond  the  Rhine.  The 
counts,  no  matter  by  whom  they  were  appointed,  made  them- 
selves independent ;  feudalism  was  established  in  Germany, 
while  in  France  it  was  already  losing  its  hold  ;  the  great 
feudatories  were  beginning  to  advance  towards  the  height  of 
their  power  on  the  right  bank  of  the  Rhine,  while  on  the  left 
the  emancipation  of  the  serfs  and  vassals  was  already  diminish- 
ing their  power. 

It  should  further  be  remarked  that  feudalism  in  Germany 
came  from  above — that  is  to  say,  originated  with  the  royal 
functionaries,  the  counts,  who  gradually  made  themselves  inde- 
pendent lords  over  the  lands  under  their  jurisdiction — whereas 
in  France  feudalism  had  begun  from  below,  originating  from 


EUROPE  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  351 

the  spontaneous  energy  of  the  landowners,  plain  private  men, 
who  had  obtained  exemption  for  their  private  estates  from  the 
intervention  of  the  counts  belonging  to  the  Merovingian 
government. 

But  before  the  German  counts  had  had  time  to  make 
themselves  independent,  the  empire  of  Louis  the  Debonnaire 
was  divided,  and  a  German  kingdom  was  formed — that  is  to  say, 
a  separate  king  was  created  for  the  German  tribes  beyond  the 
Rhine.  The  new  king  was  one  of  the  sons  of  Louis  the  Debon- 
naire, and  owing  to  his  new  position  was  sumamed  "  the 
German  "  (817  and  j$4ii).  It  was  about  that  time  that  the 
name  of  Germany  was  restored,  but  not  immediately,  however, 
for — and  it  is  very  significant — Louis  the  German  took  the 
title  of  King  of  the  Eastern  Franks.  Germany  was  really,  as^ 
a  matter  of  fact,  Eastern  France.  The  Franks  had  organised  it 
entirely  themselves  :  it  was  they  who  had  united  all  the  groups 
of  Germans  who  lived  there  ;  it  was  they  who  had  founded 
the  counties  and  who  gave  the  country  one  of  their  local  kings. 
The  Saxons  whom  Charlemagne  had  pillaged  and  massacred 
remained  in  the  second  rank,  and  the  Old  Germans  of  the 
communal  type,  the  Alemanni,  Thuringians,  and  Bavarians, 
were  easily  kept  under  by  the  particularist  Franks.  The 
Thuringians,  besides,  were  wedged  in  by  their  neighbours,  the 
Saxons  on  one  side,  and  the  Franks  of  the  Main  on  the  other, 
and  we  shall  find  that  they  cease  to  figure  in  the  great  events  of 
the  social  evolution  in  Germany. 

In  911,  when  the  last  of  the  descendants  of  the  decadent 

I   line  of  Louis  the  German  expired,  the  throne  was  left  to  take 

\  care  of  itself.     The  counts  had  taken  advantage  of  the  weak- 

Iness  of  the  king  to  institute  feudalism.     The  same  thing  then 

/occurred  as  had  happened  in  France  when  the  Merovingian 

\  line  came  to  an  end  :    one  of  the  great  feudal  lords  took  the 

title  of  king  ;   but  in  the  case  of  Germany  it  happened  during 

the  reign  of  the  last  of  the  Carlovingians — that  is  to  say,  when 

France  was  a  whole  stage  in  advance. 

It  is  easy  to  guess  who  was  the  great  feudatory  who  at- 
tempted to  place  the  crown  on  his  head  :  it  was  the  lord  who 
occupied  the  highest  position  among  the  Franks  of  Main, 
Conrad,  the  Duke  of  Franconia.  But  he  had  to  dispute  his  title 
with  the  Saxons,  who  had  recovered  from  their  disasters  under 


35          NEW  GERMANISATION  OF  CENTRAL 

the  almost  autonomous  government  of  their  duke.  The  logical 
sequence  of  these  historical  events  is  remarkable. 

The  Saxons  had,  in  fact,  been  governed  by  a  duke  ever  since 
a  count,  a  plain  count  called  Ludolph,  had,  with  a  great  display 
of  energy,  successfully  defended  the  Saxon  plain  in  the  time 
of  Louis  the  German  against  an  attack  made  by  the  Normans. 
Louis  had  adopted  a  different  policy  from  Charlemagne's  on 
this  point  with  regard  to  Saxony,  and  had  placed  Count 
Ludolph  over  the  other  counts,  both  lay  and  ecclesiastical,  in 
the  country.  And  Ludolph  had  taken  care  to  make  his  ducal 
position  hereditary.  It  was  one  of  his  descendants,  the  heir 
to  his  duchy,  Henry,  called  Henry  the  First,  or  Henry  "  the 
Bird-catcher,"  who  became  so  powerful  as  to  be  able  to  dispute 
the  crown  with  the  Duke  of  Franconia  and  succeed  in  carrying 
it  off. 

The  dukes  of  Saxony,  who  thus  became  kings,  played  the 
same  part  in  Germany  as  the  Carlo vingians  played  in  France  ; 
but  they  began  their  career  just  as  the  Carlo  vingians  finished 
theirs. 

The  title  of  king  brought  with  it  the  serious  disadvantage  of 
obliging  them  to  devote  themselves  entirely  to  warfare.  Even 
Charlemagne  had  been  quite  unable  to  escape  that  evil.  In 
the  first  place,  it  was  necessary  to  repress  the  resistance  of  the 
other  great  feudatories  of  Franconia,  of  Bavaria,  etc.  It  was 
necessary  to  head  the  national  defence  against  the  Slavs  and 
the  Fins.  Thus  the  military  profession  became  the  great 
opening  for  the  Saxons,  so  much  so  that  they  spread  from  the 
Elbe  and  the  Danube,  where  they  fought  the  Slavs  and  Fins, 
to  the  banks  of  the  Po,  where  they  defeated  the  Lombards,  who 
were  constantly  engaged  in  civil  wars,  and  annexed  their 
territory  to  Germany.  The  Saxons  were  too  much  absorbed 
in  the  military  operations  necessary  for  defending  such  a  length 
of  frontier  to  have  time  to  make  settlements  on  the  land,  to 
make  compact  agricultural  colonies  at  any  points.  The  ex- 
peditions in  which  the  dukes  of  Saxony,  the  kings  of  Germany, 
obtained  the  most  support  from  their  Saxons,  were  above  all 
the  victorious  incursions.  In  those  expeditions,  no  matter 
how  rapid  they  were,  the  Saxons  never  failed  to  find  domains 
here  and  there  of  which  they  could  take  possession,  but  they 
could  not  settle  in  large  numbers  all  over  a  country  so  as  to 


EUROPE  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  353 

found  a  purely  Saxon  form  of  society.  Moreover,  others  were 
diverted  from  settling  by  the  large  profits  they  reaped  from  war, 
as  is  proved  by  the  case  of  the  dukes  of  Saxony  themselves. 
Otho,  Henry  the  Bird-catcher's  own  son,  renounced  his  duchy 
of  Saxony,  or  at  any  rate  gave  it  in  fief  to  Henry  Billung,  who 
was  one  of  his  main  supporters  in  war,  in  order  to  carry  on  a 
campaign  against  the  Lombards. 

In  reward,  he  won  the  crown  of  Lombardy ,  which  he  de- 
clared to  be  henceforth  completely  united  to  that  of  Germany. 
Finally  he  went  south  as  far  as  Home,  where  Pope  John  xn. 
crowned  him  King  of  the  Romans  and  Emperor  of  the  West 
(962)  in  the  same  way  as  Leo  in.  had  crowned  Charlemagne. 
Thus  was  the  imperial  title,  which  had  completely  foundered 
and  disappeared  during  the  decadence  of  the  Carlovingians, 
granted  for  the  second  time  in  favour  of  the  Saxon  race. 

The  successors  of  Otho,  who  was  surnamed  the  Great, 
carried  on  his  work.  Fifty  years  after  his  death,  when  the 
emperor,  Henry  the  Holy,  died  (1024),  the  riverside  countries 
on  the  left  of  the  Rhine — that  is  to  say,  Lorraine  and  the  king- 
dom of  Aries — had  consented  to  rally  to  the  Crown  of  Germany, 
and,  consequently,  to  the  Empire.  In  this  way  Germany  was 
extended  so  as  to  include  the  valleys  of  the  Meuse  and  the 
Moselle,  and  went  as  far  as  the  Rhone.  The  jmly  part  of 
Charlemagne's  empire  which  the  German  emperors  did  not 
hold  was  the  western  part,  startingTrom  the  Escaut,  the  basin 
of  the  Seine  and  the  line  of  the  Rhone — that  is  to  say,  France 
proper,  which  remained  independent.1 

But  the  kingship  of  Germany,  with  all  the  titles  which  were 
attached  to  it,  had  absolutely  no  reality  about  it.  It  was 
merely  an  abstract  right,  which  had  no  foundation  in  any 
territory  in  particular,  was  attached  to  no  estate,  was  in  no 
way  a  hereditary  possession,  and  had  no  definite  point  of 
support  anywhere.  The  royal  office  had  in  the  main  remained  c 
elective.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  is  no  doubt  that,  in  more 
than  one  case,  assent  was  forcibly  wrung  from  the  dukes  and 
counts,  the  vassals"  of  the  crown,  but  it % had  to  be  obtained 
either  by  force  or  otherwise  :  the  king  could  not  be  invested 
unless  he  had  their  assent.  Nor  was  this  custom  peculiar  to 
Germany.  In  France  the  Capetians  of  that  same  period  used 

1  See  map  25,  Atlas,  Vidal-Lablache. 
23 


354        NEW  GERMANISATION  OF  CENTRAL 

still  to  take  care  to  get  their  successor  recognised  by  vote 
during  their  lifetime,  and  made  him  share  the  throne  from  that 
time  till  their  death.  If  they  met  with  no  resistance  in  this 
method  of  procedure,  the  reason  was  that  but  little  account 
was  taken  of  their  power,  and  that  they  contented  themselves 
with  being  elected  merely  by  the  petty  vassals  of  the  royal 
domain.  Philip  Augustus  was  the  first  to  trust  to  the  principle 
of  heredity,  for  he  felt  that  his  family  had  become  strong 
enough  to  keep  him  in  power  without  a  rival. 

The  descendants  of  Henry  the  Bird-catcher  and  Otho  the 
Great,  in  spite  of  the  principle  of  election,  managed  to  keep 
the  German  and  Imperial  throne  till  the  time  of  Henry  the 
Holy,  who  died  in  1024.  He,  however,  left  no  children. 

That  was  an  opportunity  which  the  new  Saxon  dukes,  whom 
Otho  the  Great  had  created  by  giving  his  duchy  in  fief  to  Henry 
Billung,  would  have  been  glad  to  use  for  adding  to  the  title 
they  already  possessed  the  royal  and  imperial  title  of  the  first 
house  of  Saxony,  which  thus  became  extinct.  But  they  had  to 
get  themselves  elected,  and  the  German  feudatories  were  more 
anxious  than  ever  about  their  independence,  and  were  careful 
to  avoid  such  powerful  persons.  They  preferred  to  revert  to 
the  dukes  of  Franconia,  who  had  been  formerly  defeated  by 
the  Saxon  dukes  :  they  appointed  Conrad  n. 

Thereupon,  Saxony  went  over  from  the  Government  to  the 
Opposition  :  its  role  was  reversed,  and  we  shall  find  it  leading 
the  party  of  resistance  to  power. 

What  the  decadence  of  the  Carlovingians  was  in  France, 
the  reign  of  the  Franconian  emperors,  who  were  elected  in 
succession,  was  in  Germany,  only  there  was  an  interval  of  two 
hundred  years  in  between  !  The  feudatories,  whom  fear  of  the 
power  of  the  kings — so  diminished  was  it — no  longer  constrained 
to  keep  united,  gradually  emancipated  themselves  in  turn 
and  broke  off  their  connections  with  one  another.  Hitherto 
the  counties,  and  the  duchies,  which  embraced  several  counties, 
had  remained  almost  entirely  undivided.  But  from  that  time 
the  fiefs  were  constantly  split  up  between  the  inferior  and 
superior  fief -holders  or  altered  to  form  fresh  combinations.  So 
that  a  hundred  years  afterwards  (1125),  when  the  line  of  Fran- 
conian emperors  came  to  an  end,  the  political  map  of  Germany 
is  unrecognisable.  The  counties  no  longer  correspond  to  the 


EUROPE  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  355 

ancient  pagi ;  they  are  broken  up  and  patched  together  in  a 
thousand  different  ways.  The  duchies  are  sometimes  separated 
into  small  estates,  mere  shreds  of  their  ancient  territories  ;  they 
are  narrowed,  divided,  even  displaced  or  multiplied.  It  was 
like  a  view  in  a  kaleidoscope. 

It  was  during  this  restless  period  that  the  famous  quarrels 
between  the  Franconian  emperor,  Henry  iv.,  and  the  pope, 
Gregory  vn.,  took  place.  Gregory  vii.  had  relied  upon  the 
petty  vassals,  who  were  on  their  way  to  emancipation,  and 
above  all  on  the  Saxons  in  the  Opposition,  to  overthrow  the 
power  of  his  adversary  in  the  very  centre  of  Germany.  He 
was  successful.  And  when  Henry  v.,  the  son  of  Henry  iv.j  died, 
it  was  the  Duke  of  Saxony,  Lothario,  who  was  made  emperor. 

But  feudal  independence  had  gathered  too  much  strength 
under  the  Franconian  emperors,  owing  to  the  circumstances  I 
have  described,  to  permit  of  the  Saxon  dukes  being  viewed 
with  favour  in  any  guise  except  that  of  leaders  of  the  Opposi- 
tion. People  had  no  longer  any  desire  for  powerful  emperors  ; 
they  wanted  them  less  than  ever.  The  movement  which  had 
shifted  the  reins  of  the  imperial  government  from  the  Saxons 
to  the  Franconians  became  more  marked,  and  caused  the  im- 
perial power  to  be  shifted  from  the  Franconians  to  the  Swabians 
(formerly  called  Alemanni),  when  Lothario  died  without  leaving 
a  child. 

He  had  not  left  Saxony  without  a  duke  :  he  had  bequeathed 
his  duchy  to  his  son-in-law.  The  latter  did  all  in  his  power 
to  take  the  lead  of  Conrad  in.,  Duke  of  Swabia,  who  had  been 
elected  emperor,  but  all  he  succeeded  in  doing  was  to  get  himself 
banished  from  the  empire  and  despoiled  of  his  duchy.  It  was 
Conrad  m.'s  intention  to  establish  someone  in  his  place  by 
creating  a  new  family  of  Saxon  dukes. 

But  Saxony,  which  had  already  passed  over  from  the  side 
of  the  Government  to  the  Opposition,  now  proceeded  to  pass 
to  independence  by  refusing  henceforth  to  have  a  duke.  It 
rejected  Albert  the  Bear,  who  was  proposed,  and  every  domain, 
whether  it  belonged  to  a  count,  a  bishop,  a  lord,  or  even  a  plain 
private  man,  declared  itself  to  be  free  under  the  direct  and 
illusory  suzerainty  of  the  emperor-elect  and  no  one  else.  That 
was  about  the  year  1150.  When  Saxony  had  once  more 
regained  its  local  liberty,  and  had  renounced  all  ideas  of  imperial 


356        NEW  GERMANISATION  OF  CENTRAL 

supremacy,  it  again  resumed  its  quiet  domestic  life,  and  made 
no  stir  in  politics  for  three  centuries. 

But  though  the  opening  for  acquiring  booty  and  winning 
military  glory  was  in  this  way  closed  as  far  as  Saxony  was 
concerned,  another  opening  was  made  by  commerce  :  this  we 
shall  deal  with  presently,  and  we*  shall  see  that  it  was  not  of  so 
much  value  to  Saxony  as  were  the  opportunities  of  acquiring 
estates  in  new  lands. 

The  new  line  of  emperors,  the  house  of  Swabia,  also  known 
as  the  house  of  Hohenstauffen,  had  much  the  same  career  in 
Germany  as  that  of  the  Capetians  had  in  France.  Their  power 
gradually  ebbed  away,  as  did  that  of  the  Capetians  from  Eudes 
to  Hugh  Capet.  And  they  remained  in  that  powerless  condition 
for  some  time,  as  did  the  successors  of  Hugh  Capet.  Then 
their  power  increased  again,  as  we  shall  see.  But  there  is  a 
difference  :  in  Germany  all  this  took  place  between  1150  and 
1300,  while  in  France  it  took  place  between  850  and  1100.. 
The  one  country  is  always  two  or  three  centuries  behind  the 
other.  With  Frederick  n.  the  power  of  the  emperors  in 
Germany  reached  its  lowest  pitch  ;  he  died  in  1250.  The 
peoples  of  the  south,  who  had  before  been  loyal  to  the  empire, 
deserted  it ;  the  lords  took  care  to  elect  as  emperor  only  such 
candidates  as  had  no  personal  resources  to  aid  them,  in  order 
to  keep  the  emperor  as  powerless  as  might  be.  The  Holy  See 
had  made  its  suzerainty  over  the  imperial  power  recognised  : 
the  emperor  swore  an  oath  of  fealty  in  due  form  to  the  pope. 

This  confused  state  of  things  was  followed  by  an  "  inter- 
regnum," which  lasted  twenty  years  and  was  the  final  triumph 
of  German  feudalism. 

After  the  interregnum  the  imperial  power  was  claimed  by 
a  fourth  house  ;  the  house_of_Habsburg,  as  it  was  first  called, 
but  which  afterwards  became  the  house  of  Austria,  succeeded 
those  of  Saxony,  Franconia,  and  Swabia. 

This  new  house,  as  we  shall  see,  began  the  ascent  towards 
power.  Rudolph,  Count  of  Habsburg,  a  castle  in  Argovie, 
in  Switzerland,  Landgrave  of  Alsacia,  Count  of  Baden  and  of 
other  places,  protector  of  the  cantons  of  Uri,  Schwitz,  and 
Unterwalden,  was  elected  emperor  for  the  very  reason  that  his 
territorial  possessions  were  so  small.  But  he  managed  to  inter- 
vene in  the  question  of  the  succession  to  the  March  (or  Mar- 


EUROPE  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  357 

quisate)  of  Austria,  and  in  the  end  secured  that  succession  to 
his  posterity.  By  the  acquisition  and  development  of  that 
domain  his  descendants  became  powerful  enough  to  revive  the 
power  of  the  German  kings  after  feudalism  had  spread  and 
then  decayed  through  its  own  success,  as  had  happened  in 
France. 

Let  us  watch  the  ascent  to  power  of  the  new  imperial  house. 
The  two  ancient  neighbours  and  enemies  of  the  Germans,  the 
Slavs  and  the  Fins,  had  not  disappeared  while  these  changes 
were  going  on  in  the  interior  of  Germany.  The  same  spirit  of 
chivalry  which  had  drawn  men  in  France  to  the  east,  in  Nor- 
rnandy  to  England,  in  Spain  against  the  Moors,  impelled  men 
in  Germany,  as  was  very  natural,  indeed  necessary,  to  fight 
against  their  neighbours  the  Slavs  or  the  Fins. 

There  were,  therefore,  two  countries  permanently  open  as 
fields  for  chivalry :  in  the  north  there  was  the  Baltic  plain  to 
be  won  from  the  Slavs  ;  in  the  south  the  basin  of  the  Danube 
to  be  captured  from  other  Slavs  or  from  Fins. 

The  first  conquests  in  the  Baltic  plain,  just  beyond  the 
Elbe,  resulted  in  the  formation  of  a  frontier  county,  or  march, 
called  the  Northern  March  or  March  of  Brandenburg.  Branden- 
burg was  a  religious  centre  of  the  Slavs,  which  was  situated 
in  the  midst  of  forests  and  marshes. 

The  first  conquest  in  the  basin  of  the  Danube  (outside 
Bavaria,  be  it  understood)  resulted  in  the  formation  of  the 
Eastern  or  Austrian  March.  These  two  "  marches "  were 
the  embryos  of  Prussia  and  Austria  respectively. 

Those  two  great  states  were  formed,  as  we  see,  in  lands 
that  had  ceased  to  be  German.  They  had  become  Slav  or 
Finnish  territory. 

The  land  was  so  well  suited  to  a  race  like  that  of  the  Slavs 
and  Fins  that  it  was  extremely  difficult,  or  rather  impossible, 
for  races  that  had  become  sedentary,  like  those  of  feudal 
Germany,  to  settle  there  except  by  shutting  themselves  up 
inside  walls,  as  is  done  by  agents  of  commercial  firms  who  settle 
in  the  midst  of  peoples  who  are  perpetually  on  the  move  or 
engaged  in  making  incursions. 

When  they  considered  that  a  piece  of  land  had  been  con- 
quered, the  lords,  who  carried  on  these  enterprises  to  suit  their 
own  private  ends,  transported  Germans  or  Alemanni  to  the 


358       NEW  GERMANISATION  OF  CENTRAL 

place  ;  but  within  a  short  space  the  natives  would  return  armed, 
and  destroy  all  the  settlements.  Everything  had  to  be  begun 
over  again.  It  was  decided  to  build  walled  towns.  The 
Germans  could  carry  on  trade  with  the  newly  conquered  people 
with  greater  security^  within  the  walls.  Those  who  settled 
outside  the  closed  towns,  on  isolated  estates  or  in  unprotected 
villages,  were  sure,  before  long,  to  become  the  victims  of  some 
raid,  some  rising,  or  some  other  caprice  of  the  natives  of  the 
land.  In_the^end,  then,  German  colonisation  was  effected 
only_b^  means  of  walled  cities  or  else  of  strong  manorial  castles  ; 
which  is  the  same  thing  as  saying  that  it  was  brought  about 
not  by  agriculture,  but  by_war  and  commerce. 

Even  when  the  German  emigrants  succeeded  in  securing 
peace  in  the  conquered  country,  and  were  left  undisturbed  by 
the  natives,  they  very  soon  became  dissatisfied  with  rural  life  : 

(1)  because  the  mass  of  the  country-people,  who  were  Slavs  or 
Fins,  were  treated  as  a  conquered  race,  burdened  with  taxes, 
closely  watched,  governed  as  if    they  were  far  beneath  the 
rulers,  and  held  in  contempt,  and  it  was  almost  inevitable 
that  the  Germans  who  mingled  with  them  should  be  confounded 
with  them  and  should  soon  be  put  upon  the  same  footing  ; 

(2)  because  it  was  so  easy  to  make  a  profit  by  trading,  in  the 
security  of  the  walled  towns,  in  those  new  countries  where 
industrial  arts   were  unknown,  that   the    Germans   who  had 
settled  in  the  country  districts  were  fatally  attracted  to  the 
towns. 

The  new  colonisation  of  the  Baltic  plain  and  the  basin  of  the 
Danube  by  the  Germans  was  therefore  achieved  in  the  first 
instance  by  commerce,  by  the  foundation  of  towns,  and  by 
military  force. 

As  for  the  Slav  or  Finnish  population,  which  was  of  the  pure 
patriarchal  type,  it  became  Germanised  in  so  far  as  it  adopted 
the  language  of  the  conquerors  and  merchants,  became  partially 
incorporated  with  the  German  population  in  the  towns,  and  was 
obliged,  owing  to  the  taxes  imposed  upon  it,  to  cultivate  the 
land  with  more  persistency,  and,  as  always  happens  in  such 
cases,  to  reduce  the  family  community  to  its  lowest  terms — that 
is  to  say,  to  groups  of  two,  or  at  most  three,  households  :  that 
of  the  father,  that  of  the  heir,  and  perhaps  that  of  some  other  son 
who  had  still  to  be  set  up  in  the  world.  But  the  particularist 


EUROPE  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  359 

form  of  society,  with  its  solitary  household,  the  direct  result  of 
the  ability  to  create  an  independent  estate,  was  hardly  ever 
found  among  those  conquered  tribes. 

This  kind  of  Germanisation  went  on  in  the  greater  part  of 
Germany — that  is,  in  all  parts  of  the  land  that  lies  beyond  the 
Elbe,  and  the  Saale,  its  tributary,  and  the  Inn,  a  tributary  of 
the  Danube. 

But  that  is  not  all. 

We  must  not  forget  that,  even  in  the  eastern  part  of  that 
region, — that  is  to  say,  between  the  Elbe,  the  Saale,  and  the  Inn 
on  the  one  hand,  and  the  Rhine  on  the  other, — the  greater  part  of 
the  population  belonged  to  the  type  of  the  Old  Germans,  which 
was  also  a  communal  type.  The  only  families  there  belonging 
to  the  particularist  type  were  those  living  on  the  barren  lands 
of  the  Saxon  plain  and  those  who  had  come  to  Franconia  as 
Frankish  emigrants. 

If  it  be  further  added  that  these  Saxons  and  Franconians 
were  attracted,  as  we  have  seen,  by  the  prospects  of  gain  to  take 
part  in  military  expeditions  into  the  interior  of  the  lands  under 
German  domination  during  the  imperial  epoch  which  we  have 
been  studying,  we  shall  understand  the  military,  communal,  and 
urban  character  presented  by  the  Middle  Ages  in  Germany,  in 
spite  of  its  particularist  elements. 

We  shall  understand  why  there  was  such  a  difference  between 
a  country  of  that  type  and  Great  Britain,  which  was  colonised 
through  and  through  by  Saxons  who  were  entirely  agricultural 
and  completely  independent. 

Lastly,  we  shall  not  be  astonished  that  the  populations  of  the 
Baltic  plain  and  the  basin  of  the  Danube,  who  were  of  Slav  or 
Finnish  origin  and  were  conquered  and  assimilated  merely  by 
commercial,  urban,  and  military  settlements,  should  have  given 
the  lords  of  the  two  Marches,  the  Northern  and  the  Austrian 
Marches,  every  facility  for  establishing  the  monarchic  system  in 
all  its  vigour  over  those  wide  stretches  of  country. 

Now  it  was  not  till  they  had  been  strengthened  by  this 
centralised  power  and  by  these  vast  territorial  possessions  that 
the  lords  ventured  to  lay  hands  upon  old  feudal  Germany, 
where  feudalism  had,  for  the  matter  of  that,  run  its  natural 
course. 

Austria  was  the  first  to  take  this  step,  and  for  two  reasons  : 


360        NEW  GERMANISATION  OF  CENTRAL 

1 .  Owing  to  a  concatenation  of  entirely  uiJooked-f or  events, 
an  extraordinary  number  of  German  principalities  had  been 
joined  to  Austria  through,  inheritances  and  marriages.     Two 
lines  of  Latin  verse  have  immortalised  this  celebrated  historical 
fact  : 

"  Bella  gerant  alii ;    tu,  felix  Austria,  nube  : 
Nam,  quae  Mars  aliis,  dat  tibi  regna  Venus." 

2.  The  purely  German,  as  well  as  the  Slav  or  Finnish  lands  in 
Austrian  territory,  were  far  richer  than  those  of  the  north,  which 
caused  the  King  of  Prussia  to  be  called  in  jest  the  "  Archi-Grand- 
Sablier  (sand-box)  (TAllemagne" 

We  shall  stop  for  the  present  at  the  moment  when  Austria 
had  created  her  vast  domain  and  had  gained  sufficient  power 
over  the  rest  of  Germany  to  enable  her  to  keep  the  hegemony 
and  make  it  and  the  imperial  title  which  she  had  rendered 
hereditary  the  permanent  possession  of  her  house. 

We  shall  only  add  that  outside_Germany  the  rivalry  of  France, 
who  had  taken  the  lead  of  her  in  the  reconstitution  of  the  cen- 
tralising monarchic  system,  and  inside  Germany  the  rivalry 
of  Prussia,  prevented  Austria  from  achieving,  as  France  did, 
the  complete  unification  of  the  country  which  had  before  been 
feudal. 

It  was  our  intention  to  indicate  here  only  the  evolution  of 

feudalism  in  Germany  and  the  return  of  the  monarchic  system, 

as  we  did  before  in  the  case  of  France.     We  shall  return  later 

on  to  the  full  development  of  monarchy  in  modern  times.     We 

are  now  going  to  pause  in  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  century 

(1438),  at  the  moment  when  the  seat  of  the  German  Empire  had 

been  definitely  established  on  Austrian  territory  and  the  imperial 

title  had  been  permanently  bestowed  upon  the  house  of  Austria, 

which  had  sprung  from  Rudolph    of   Habsburg,  whose  first 

advance  towards  power  was  made,  as  we  saw,  in  1273. 

I        Monarchy,  with  its  centralising  tendency,  was  thus  estab- 

\  lished  in  Germany  a  century  or  a  century  and  a  half  after 

(that  of  France. 

We  have  hinted  that  society  in  Germany  tended  to  be  urban 
in  character,  not  merely  owing  to  its  military  and  administrative 
colonisation  and  its  communal  origin,  but  also  to  its  commerce . 
Commerce  is  the  next  point  we  shall  investigate  in  the  history  of 


EUROPE  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  361 

our  particularists,  just  as  we  studied  industry  in  connection 
with  the  communal  movement.  We  shall  then  see  still  more 
clearly  the  tendency  towards  town  life  which  Germany  exhibited 
and  the  deviation  it  thereby  made  from  the  particularist  form 
of  society. 


CHAPTER   XXIII 

THE  COMMERCE  OF  THE  FREE  TOWNS 
IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 

SO  far  we  have  watched  the  changes  which  the  development 
of  agriculture  under  the  feudal  system  and  the  revival 
of  industry  under  the  communal  or  "  bourgeois  "  system  brought 
about  in  the  particularist  form  of  society  which  was  introduced 
into  Gaul  and  Central  Europe  by  the  Franks.  We  have  now  to 
consider  from  the  same  point  of  view  how  commerce  affected 
that  region. 

Prior  to  the  prosperity  of  urban  industries,  commerce  was 
carried  on  by  means  of  fairs  in  the  countries  where  the  Frankish 
system  of  managing  estates  prevailed,  just  as  it  is  still  carried 
on  in  purely  rural  districts,  since  everything,  even  manufactured 
articles,  came  from  the  country. 

The  town  of  Troyes  was  situated  in  Champagne,  in  the  upper 
valley  of  the  Seine,  at  a  point  nearing  the  south  to  which  the 
Franks,  by  using  the  river,  could  easily  bring  their  produce  ;  that 
was  the  place  where  they  had  held  their  fairs  ever  since  their 
first  settlement  in  France  in  the  fifth  century.  It  was  just  at 
that  place  that  the  north,  south,  and  east  seemed  to  meet  at  a 
point.  The  produce  of  Spain  came  through  Aquitaine  ;  that  of 
Provence,  Lombardy,  and  Italy  through  Burgundy  ;  and  that 
of  Eastern  France  through  Austrasia.  Troyes  formed  the 
centre  from  which  radiated  the  rivers,  the  easy  lines  of  transit 
from  one  river  to  another,  and  the  roads  through  the  flat  country. 

Though  the  merchant  had  to  overcome  great  difficulties  in  his 
journey  to  Troyes,  owing  to  the  length  of  the  road  and  the 
diversity  of  peoples  through  whose  lands  he  passed,  he  had  some 
compensations  :  for  prices  were  high,  because  markets  were  so 
rare.  Besides,  it  was  so  manifestly  to  the  advantage  of  the 
surrounding  countries  that  that  unwonted  concourse  of  buyers 

362 


THE  COMMERCE  OF  THE  FREE  TOWNS     363 

and  sellers  should  take  place  in  their  neighbourhood,  that  every 
effort  was  made  to  facilitate  it :  all  round  about,  people  avoided 
molesting  travellers,  and  the  lords  allowed  merchandise  to  pass 
the  tolls  free  of  charge  or  at  reduced  rates  ;  by  degrees  they  even 
tried  to  secure  a  safe  passage  for  the  traders  through  all  the 
lands  by  which  they  had  to  come  from  distant  parts. 

Once  Troyes  was  reached  from  the  south  and  the  east,  it  was 
very  easy  to  go  to  Paris  by  simply  drifting  downstream  on  the 
Seine.  So  it  came  about  that,  with  the  increase  of  the  import- 
ance of  the  Franks  and  Merovingians,  a  rival  fair  to  that  of 
Troyes  was  organised  near  Paris  at  St.  Denis.  It  was  already 
started  in  the  time  of  Dagobert,  in  629. 

As  the  needs  and  facilities  of  the  times  increased,  the  fairs 
multiplied,  but  chiefly  in  the  following  regions  :  Champagne  and 
Parisis  (i.e.  the  region  round  Paris).  The  fairs  that  were  held  in 
Champagne  and  at  or  near  Paris  have  remained  the  most 
famous. 

They  became  particularly  famous  in  the  time  of  Charlemagne, 
owing  to  the  way  in  which  the  Franks  had  spread  over  the  land 
and  to  the  feeling  of  safety  which  Charlemagne's  name  inspired. 

Such,  then,  roughly  speaking,  was  the  state  of  commerce 
before  the  birth  of  urban  industries  in  the  country  where  Frankish 
influence  predominated  :  it  owed  its  purely  rural  character  to  the 
particularist  organisation  of  society ;  such  was  commerce  as  it 
existed  under  the  sovereignty  of  the  agricultural  domain. 

When  urban  manufacture  came  to  the  fore,  the  inhabitants 
of  the  towns  obtained  liberty  and  security  for  their  commerce 
within  their  walls  by  emancipating  themselves  from  the  domina- 
tion of  the  lord  by  forming  various  associations,  such  as  com- 
munes, municipalities,  or  associations  of  burgesses.  But  what 
could  they  do  outside  their  walls  ?  Three  obstacles  stood  in  the 
way  of  commerce  there  :  (1)  the  chance  attacks  of  armed  forces, 
led  by  the  lords  or  by  bands  of  adventurers  ;  (2)  the  tolls  which 
the  lords  levied  on  everything  passing  through  their  estates, 
like  the  customs  which  are  now  levied  by  Government ;  (3)  the 
bad  condition  of  the  roads  :  for  it  is  obvious  that  under  a  system 
which  encouraged  isolated  estates,  it  was  no  one's  interest  to 
keep  up  the  public  roads. 

In  the  face  of  these  obstacles,  the  following  were  the  only 
resources  that  were  at  the  disposal  of  the  towns  :  (1)  to  use 


364     THE  COMMERCE  OF  THE  FREE  TOWNS 

their  militia  for  retaliating  if  attacks  were  made  on  merchants, 
for  the  militia  was  authorised  by  the  charters  of  enfranchisement 
to  go  outside  urban  territory  in  such  cases  ;  (2)  with  regard 
to  the  toll  dues,  to  regulate  the  taxes  by  holding  them  in  fief  in 
consideration  of  a  fixed  rate  to  be  paid  annually  to  the  lords. 
That  was  chiefly  done  in  the  case  ef  the  river  tolls  ;  in  other  cases 
the  towns  did  not  hold  the  tolls  in  fief,  but  obtained  the  right  of 
free  passage  by  paying  the  lords  vast  sums  of  money  either  once 
for  all  or  in  several  instalments  ;  (3)  with  regard  to  the  bad 
state  of  the  roads,  to  conduct  their  transports  by  water.  It  was, 
besides,  the  most  economical  way  of  transporting  merchandise  ; 
the  transference  of  goods  by  land  from  one  river  to  another 
could  be  done  in  a  very  short  time.  Rivers  were  the  only 
roads  used,  with  the  exception  of  a  few  remains  of  Roman 
roads. 

In  short,  the  effect  of  urban  industries  on  the  methods  of 
transport  was  limited  to  the  development  of  the  boat  service. 

This  boat  service  subsequently  became  quite  famous  on  the 
main  rivers  and  along  the  seashore. 

"  Nearly  all  the  commercial  societies  or  societies  for  organis- 
ing transports  which,  under  the  name  of  Guilds,  or  Hanses,  or 
Trading  Corporations,  were  destined  to  play  so  brilliant  a  part  in 
the  Middle  Ages,  were  formed  during  the  eleventh  and  twelfth 
centuries.  It  was  about  that  time  that  the  Hanse  of  Rouen 
must  have  been  formed  for  the  purpose  of  organising  the  naviga- 
tion of  the  Lower  Seine,  and  the  Parisian  Corporation  of  Traffickers 
by  Water,  the  Companies  of  Merchants  using  the  river  Loire  for 
transport,  and  the  privileged  association  of  Bordeaux  for  Wine- 
merchants,  for  organising  the  navigation  of  the  Middle  Seine, 
the  Loire,  and  the  Garonne  respectively.  It  was  also  at  that 
time  that  a  corporation  of  Merchant  Sailors  of  Flemish  towns 
was  formed  under  the  name  of  the  Hanse  of  London,  for  trans- 
porting English  wool  to  the  Continent. 

"  All  these  corporations  had  the  same  object,  the  same 
character.  They  were  composed  of  wholesale  merchants  and 
shipowners,  the  owners  of  small  boats  or  vessels,  who  formed 
the  upper  class  of  burgesses  of  the  principal  trading  towns.  At 
Paris  the  provost — that  is  to  say,  the  president-elect  of  the 
Traffickers  by  Water — became  the  head  of  the  municipality,  the 
famous  Provost  of  Merchants.  The  Parlour  of  the  Burgesses — 


IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  365 

that  is  to  say,  the  headquarters  of  that  association — became  the 
leading  hotel  of  Paris.  And  the  arms  of  Paris  are  nothing  more 
than  the  seal  of  the  Traffickers  by  Water,  who  as  early  as  the 
twelfth  century  adopted  a  ship  as  the  emblem  of  their  Parisian 
Hanse.  At  Rouen  the  Hanse  of  Rouen  became  the  council  of  the 
commune,  and  provided  it  with  its  elective  leaders.  At  Bor- 
deaux it  was  from  the  Wine-merchants,  who  were  at  the  same 
time  the  shipowners,  that  the  aldermen — that  is  to  say,  the 
urban  authorities — came  to  be  chosen.  The  same  things  came 
about  in  the  great  Flemish  towns  and  at  Saint-Omer."  l 

Though  these  corporations  of  merchants  and  shipowners 
acquired  such  celebrity  later  on,  they  began  on  a  small  scale, 
and  for  a  long  time  commerce  remained  restricted  to  small 
areas,  because  the  activity  of  the  towns  outside  their  walls  made 
itself  felt  at  first  only  in  a  small  sphere  owing  to  the  difficulties 
we  mentioned  above.     (1)  The  town  militia  which  avenged  the 
attacks  made  upon  the  merchants  could  only  go  one  day's  march 
from  the  town,  and  could  not  carry  on  a  campaign  except  in 
expeditions  led  by  the  king ;  it  was  therefore  powerless  to  protect 
ordinary  commerce  outside  the  town  beyond  a  certain  limited 
radius.     (2)  The  tolls  were  multiplied  to  such  an  extent  owing 
to  the  want  of  money  experienced  by  the  lords  in  the  period  of 
their  decadence,  and  to  the  more  and  more  marked  separation 
of  the  feudal  domains  across  which  the  merchandise  had  to  be 
carried,  that  in  many  cases  it  became  a  complicated  matter  and 
a  very  onerous  task  for  the  towns  to  rent  the  collection  of  the 
tolls  on  a  long  public  route,  so  that  the  power  which  they  might 
have  had  of  regulating  the  tolls  charged  on  merchandise  was 
generally  considerably  restricted.     (3)  Lastly,  the  bad  condition 
of  the  roads  was  not  sufficiently  compensated  for  by  the  develop- 
ment of  water  transport  service,  because  the  different  corpora- 
tions for  organising  the  river  traffic  each  looked  after  a  special 
piece  of  the  river,  with  the  result  that  the  merchandise  had  to  be 
shipped  from  the  boats  of  one  company  to  those  of  another, 
which  gave  rise  to  complications.     For  instance,  the  Hanse  of 
Rouen  stopped  the  Parisian  Traffickers  by  Water  from  using  the 
Lower  Seine,  while  the  latter  in  their  turn  put  an  end  to  their 
"  frequentation,"  as  they  used  then  to  call  it,  of  the  Middle 
Seine. 

1  Pigeonneau,  Histoire  du  Commerce  de  la  France,  vol.  i.  pp.  112-115. 


366     THE  COMMERCE  OF  THE  FREE  TOWNS 

Thus,  under  the  influence  of  the  renewed  prosperity  and  the 
enfranchisement  of  the  towns,  a  large  number  of  ordinary 
markets  in  the  principal  urban  centres  came  to  be  used  in  addition 
to  the  great  periodical  fairs,  which,  however,  became  more  and 
more  important,  owing  to  the  increasing  prosperity.  But  it 
was  only  by  slow  degrees  that  the  radius  affected  by  these 
markets  became  enlarged. 

Before  the  towns  had  had  time  of  themselves  to  overcome 
the  obstacles  that  checked  the  extension  of  their  business,  the 
enterprises  of  chivalry  suddenly  opened  a  new  and  distant  field 
for  the  development  of  commerce. 

The  expeditions  of  the  knights,  whether  crusades  or  ambitious 
conquests,  which  were  directed  towards  the  south  and  the  east, 
and  pushed  to  very  remote  parts ,  were  crowned  at  first  with 
wonderful  success,  and  provided  excellent  opportunities  for 
western  traders  by  opening  out  for  them  countries  that  had  long 
been  closed  and  which  have  been  at  all  times  the  most  fruitful 
sources  of  commercial  wealth. 

But  this  distant  commerce  was  not  organised  by  the  free 
action  of  the  towns  in  France  ;  for,  while  chivalry  was  achieving 
this  unlooked-for  venture,  the  king  had  succeeded  in  laying  a 
hand,  on  the  one  side,  on  the  liberty  of  the  towns,  and  on  the 
other,  on  the  power  of  the  lords,  so  that  it  was  he  himself  who  by 
taking  the  towns  under  his  control  and  managing  the  lords, 
whether  they  liked  it  or  not,  made  it  his  business  to  intervene  : 
(1)  to  guarantee  to  merchants  security  against  the  attacks  of  the 
lords  and  of  adventurers  ;  (2)  to  restrict  or  reduce  the  number 
and  the  rate  of  the  tolls  ;  (3)  to  ameliorate  in  some  small  degree 
the  condition  of  the  roads,  but  above  all  to  facilitate  the  use  of  the 
waterways  in  spite  of  the  competition  of  the  Hanses. 

Needless  to  say,  the  king  rewarded  himself  for  his  trouble 
with  certain  fees,  which  still  continued  to  be  very  onerous  for 
commerce. 

Thus  the  turn  which  events  took  in  France  takes  us  outside 
the  range  of  the  feudal  system  and  shows  us  distant  commerce 
only  under  the  monarchical  system  of  government.  We  must 
therefore  return  to  Germany,  where  we  know  that  the  social 
evolution  was  a  few  centuries  behind  that  of  France  :  we  shall 
there  be  able  to  see  in  what  manner  distant  commerce,  which  was 
opened  up  for  western  merchants  by  the  crusades  and  by  the 


IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  367 

conquests  of  the  eleventh  and  twelfth  centuries,  developed  in 
the  midst  of  feudalism  and  in  towns  that  were  still  free. 

In  entering  upon  the  study  of  distant  commerce,  the  type  of 
commerce  which  was  characteristic  of  that  epoch — and  it  was 
genuine  commerce  and  a  very  different  thing  from  the  direct 
exchange  of  articles  on  a  small  scale  in  one  locality  which  was 
carried  on  by  the  artisans  themselves — we  must  observe  that  we 
are  dealing  with  a  special  means  of  living,  a  condition  of  life  and 
a  state  of  society  in  which  traffic  has  the  advantage  over  manu- 
facture and  the  trader  and  transporter  take  the  lead  of  the 
manufacturer,  even  in  cases  where  one  and  the  same  person 
carries  on  these  different  enterprises  at  the  same  time. 

The  products  of  the  tropics  and  analogous  regions  provide 
incomparably  the  most  important  articles  of  commerce.  This 
has  been  so  since  the  first  ages  of  the  world,  has  never  ceased  to 
be,  and  is  so  to-day  as  much  as  ever.  It  explains  why  European 
peoples  take  an  interest,  which  appears  very  strange  at  first 
sight,  in  disputing  even  at  the  present  moment  the  possession 
of  a  continent  which  is  as  remote  and  impracticable  as  Africa, 
and  moreover  in  disputing  the  possession  of  the  central  part  of 
Africa,  which  is  the  least  accessible,  the  least  habitable,  and  the 
most  barbarous.  Three-quarters  of  the  history  of  the  world, 
ancient  as  well  as  modern,  would  be  incomprehensible  to  anyone 
who  had  not  realised  the  important  part  played  by  the  tropics, 
the  great  generators  of  commerce. 

The  peoples  who  receive  the  products  of  the  tropics  and  of 
analogous  regions  direct  are  the  peoples  of  the  south  and  the 
east. 

Therefore  the  south  and  the  east  are  the  great  markets. 

Now,  we  have  already  learned  from  our  previous  study  of 
Germany  the  extent  to  which  our  Neo-Germans  were  separated 
from  the  south  and  east,  and  thereby  shut  out  from  commerce. 
The  Slavs  and  the  Fins,  with  their  patriarchal  mode  of  life, 
occupied  the  whole  of  Central  Europe  from  north  to  south,  from 
the  base  of  Jutland  to  ancient  Greece.  The  great  Hellenic 
peninsula,  the  other  shores  of  the  ^Egean,  and  the  region  near 
Constantinople,  were  all  that  they  had  not  occupied  to  the  east 
of  the  slanting  line  from  the  base  of  the  Gulf  of  Kiel  to  the  base 
of  the  Adriatic,  and  from  the  base  of  the  Adriatic  to  the  great 
African  Syrtes.  It  is  at  once  clear  how  much  the  Franks  and 


368     THE  COMMERCE  OF  THE  FREE  TOWNS 

Saxons  were  cut  off  from  the  east.  In  the  south  they  came  into 
contact  with  Neo-Latin  peoples.1 

It  is  apparent  from  a  glance  at  the  map  that  the  nearest 
point  by  which  Germany  could  reach  the  southern  and  eastern 
seas  was  the  great  bay  to  the  north  of  the  Adriatic.  But  that 
point  was  outside  our  particujarist  region.  When,  therefore, 
thanks  to  the  eastern  crusades  and  the  conquest  in  the  south,  the 
Neo-German  world  was  brought  into  touch  with  the  countries 
possessing  valuable  natural  products,  it  made  use  of  peoples  who 
were  not  Neo-Germans  as  intermediaries,  and  afforded  them 
excellent  opportunities  of  developing  their  commerce. 

I  will  state  in  a  few  words  the  history  of  this  branch  of 
commerce,  which  was  so  much  influenced  by  the  particularists, 
who  in  their  turn  reaped  the  benefits  of  it. 

The  people  dwelling  round  the  great  bay  at  the  north  of  the 
Adriatic,  who  were  led  by  circumstances  to  take  the  lead  in  the 
commercial  movement,  were  not  unprepared  for  it.  A  race  of 
navigators  was  bred  there  which  originated  in  very  much  the 
same  way  as  the  inhabitants  of  Tyre  and  Sidon.  When  Attila 
invaded  Italy,  the  inhabitants  of  the  lands  round  the  north  of 
the  Adriatic  had  sought  refuge  in  the  scattered  islands  in  the  midst 
of  the  lagoons.  They  made  their  living  by  carrying  on  marine 
industries,  by  exchanging  fish  and  salt  for  whatever  they  wanted. 
At  the  same  time  they  found  it  profitable  to  do  a  certain  amount 
of  shipping.  In  that  way  they  became  traders.  They  gradually 
extended  their  journeys  along  the  coasts,  reached  Greece, 
entered  the  .ZEgean  Sea,  and  touched  at  Constantinople.  They 
then  found  that  the  east  was  practically  close  by  on  their  left 
as  soon  as  they  sailed  out  of  the  Adriatic,  and,  once  there,  it  was 
easy  for  them  to  penetrate  the  eastern  shores  in  all  directions. 
They  made  their  way  to  the  North  Sea,  and  even  succeeded  in 
making  settlements  in  the  Caspian,  where  they  had  salt  mines. 
They  landed  all  along  the  coast  of  Asia  Minor  and  Syria  ;  they 
went  south  to  Egypt. 

They  were  the  Venetians,  needless  to  say. 

When  the  crusaders  had  been  persuaded,  by  the  prodigious 
difficulties  of  the  overland  journey  across  Europe,  to  take  to 
the  sea,  they  went  to  Venice,  the  nearest  port,  to  ask  for  vessels. 
And  Venice  then  rose  to  an  unheard-of  height  of  prosperity. 

1  See  maps  22  and  25,  Atlas,  Vidal-Lablache. 


IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  369 

Not  only  did  she  make  enormous  profits  by  this  unwonted 
transport  service,  but  she  conceived  a  lofty  policy  in  the  interests 
of  commerce,  she  armed  a  fleet  for  war  at  her  own  expense, 
took  an  important  part  in  the  capture  of  maritime  towns  in  the 
Holy  Land,  and  made  herself  recognised  as  sovereign,  or  made 
the  crusaders  grant  her  the  sovereignty  of  some  of  the  ports  or 
of  certain  quarters  of  the  towns  and  of  several  islands  in  the 
Archipelago.  In  a  word,  she  knew  how  to  employ  the  crusades 
to  the  advantage  of  her  commerce. 

We  have  already  observed  how  it  came  about  that  commerce 
was  the  only  profitable  result,  on  the  material  side,  of  the 
crusades  : 1  it  certainly  was  extremely  profitable.  The  citizens 
of  Venice,  who  had  not  an  inch  of  land  beyond  their  own  houses 
in  Venice  itself,  had  the  most  princely  villas  in  the  countries  of 
the  east  and  south  that  were  opened  up  by  their  trade.  "  The 
villas,  the  gardens,  the  castles  of  our  fellow-citizens,"  says  an 
old  Venetian  chronicler,  "  are  Dalmatia,  Roumania,  Greece, 
Trebizond,  Syria,  Armenia,  Egypt,  Cyprus,  Candia,  La  Pouille, 
Sicily,  and  other  lands  where  they  find  happiness  and  security, 
and  where  they  live  for  scores  of  years  with  their  sons,  their 
nephews,  and  their  families.  Leonard  Venieri,  who  was  Procu- 
rator of  St.  Mark,  settled  at  Constantinople,  where  he  bought 
a  beautiful  palace  ;  several  of  the  Ca-Mosto  family  lived  in 
Syria  ;  Sebastian  Ziani,  who  was  afterwards  doge,  lived  in 
Armenia  for  a  long  time  ;  some  members  of  the  Bondumieri 
family  were  settled  at  Acre  ;  the  Donado-Moros  at  Negro- 
pont.  .  .  ."  2 

But,  in  spite  of  the  exceptional  advantages  in  her  favour, — 
we  shall  define  them  better  presently,— Venice  had  not  been, 
and  was  not,  without  rivals. 

The  three  chief  rivals  were  Amalfi,  Pisa,  and  Genoa.  I 
quote  them  in  the  order  of  their  increasing  importance. 

These  towns  had  acquired  their  liberty  during  the  ninth 
century.  In  this  respect  they  were  far  in  advance  of  our 
northern  communes.  They  had  not,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
passed  through  the  feudal  system  ;  but  they  had  simply  taken 
advantage  of  the  fall  of  the  power  of  the  Lombards,  the  Old 
German  conquerors  of  Italy,  to  declare  themselves  independent. 

1  See  above,  pp.  324,  325. 

2  See  Hisloire  de  Venise,  by  Galibert,  p.  171. 
24 


370     THE  COMMERCE  OF  THE  FREE  TOWNS 

The  Lombards,  as  we  know,  had  been  defeated  by  Charlemagne, 
but  he  had  not  had  time  to  reorganise  their  territory  before 
leaving  the  empire  to  his  impotent  successors. 

It  was  the  coming  of  the  crusaders  that  brought  about  a 
sudden  development  in  these  three  towns. 

The  result  of  this  development  was  twofold.  The  families 
who  had  amassed  the  greatest  riches  through  commerce,  sub- 
stituted, in  their  own  favour,  the  government  of  a  single  person 
for  that  of  the  city,  in  the  same  way  as  the  empire  had  formerly 
done  at  Rome.  Subsequently  the  towns  tried  to  destroy  one 
another  in  order  to  remain  without  rivals. 

Those  are  the  most  marked  phases  of  their  history,  the  same 
in  all  cases,  with  variations  in  detail  which  do  not  claim  our 
attention  here. 

Amain,  being  the  weakest,  was  the  first  to  succumb  to  the 
domination  of  the  first  Norman  prince  who  exchanged  the  title 
of  Count  of  Sicily  for  that  of  King  (1130),  and  to  the  repeated 
attacks  of  its  rival,  Pisa  (1135-37). 

Pisa  likewise,  in  its  turn,  succumbed  in  the  rivalry  for 
power  which  the  adventures  of  Ugolino  have  rendered  famous, 
and  fell  beneath  the  attacks  of  the  Genoese,  its  competitors,  at 
the  battle  of  Meloria  in  1284. 

Genoa, then  left  to  face  Venice  alone,  maintained  the  struggle 
more  vigorously.  It  would  be  fairly  correct  to  say  that  it 
shared  the  commerce  of  the  east  equally  with  Venice.  The 
region  round  Constantinople  and  the  whole  basin  of  the  Black 
Sea  specially  belonged  to  Genoa.  In  1381  it  very  nearly 
annihilated  its  rival's  fleet  in  the  port  of  Chioggia,  a  little  to  the 
south  of  Venice. 

Yet  how  was  it  that  Genoa  succumbed  ?  As  was  the  case 
with  the  others,  her  fall  was  due  on  the  one  hand  to  the  internal 
intrigues  which  were  constantly  made  with  the  object  of  setting 
up  despots  ;  and  on  the  other,  to  the  rivalry  of  a  maritime  power 
which  arose  towards  the  end  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  which 
we  shall  come  across  later  on,  that  of  the  Aragons,  the  Spaniards 
of  the  kingdom  of  Aragon,  which  deprived  her  of  her  trade  in 
the  west  of  the  Mediterranean. 

Why  did  Venice  happen  to  be  stronger  than  her  three  rivals, 
Amalfi,  Pisa,  and  Genoa  ? 

The  superiority  of  Venice  was  due  to  two  things  : 


IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  371 

1.  She  had  a  considerable  advantage  over  the  others  from 
the  point  of  view  of  place,  time,  and  trade ;  2.  Her  maritime 
position  in  the  lagoons  was  incomparably  the  most  secure. 

1.  (a)  Her  advantage  from  the  point  of  view  of  place. — We 
have  already  remarked  that  the  base  of  the  Adriatic,  where 
Venice  is  situated,  was  the  nearest  point  at  which  the  new 
people  of  the  west,  our  Neo-Germans,  could  take  ship  to  go  to 
the  east.  On  the  other  hand,  it  was  easy  to  penetrate  from 
that  point  into  the  interior  of  the  lands  to  the  west  and  north 
in  order  to  trade  in  eastern  wares.  To  the  west,  the  vast  plain 
of  the  Po,  with  the  great  river  and  its  tributaries  which  spread 
out  so  conveniently  to  right  and  left  all  the  way  up  the  plain, 
made  an  easy  approach  to  France  through  Transalpine  Gaul. 
On  the  north,  the  river  Adige  brought  the  traveller  nearly  up  to 
the  Inn,  a  tributary  of  the  Danube  ;  in  modern  times  the  chief 
railway  line  between  Germany  and  Italy  follows  that  route. 

"  Of  all  the  trading  republics  of  Italy,"  says  Reclus,  "  Venice 
became  the  richest  and  the  most  powerful  after  many  struggles 
which  she  sustained  with  the  most  ardent  patriotism  ;  she  had, 
moreover,  the  best  position  for  facilitating  trade.  Her  position 
at  the  extremity  of  the  Adriatic,  not  far  from  that  part  of  the 
Alps  where  the  mountains  form  a  low  threshold  as  it  were 
between  the  plateaux  of  Illyria  and  the  snow-covered  peaks 
of  the  Carinthia  and  the  Tyrol,  enables  her  to  communicate 
easily  with  all  the  markets  of  Germany,  Flanders,  and  Scandi- 
navia." x  These  advantages  become  all  the  more  apparent  if 
the  position  of  Venice  is  contrasted  with  that  of  Amain,  Pisa, 
or  Genoa,  which  are  far  less  favourably  situated. 

(b)  Her  advantage  from  the  point  of  view  of  time. — We  have 
already  seen  that  Venice  began  her  career  in  the  fifth  century 
at  the  time  of  Attila's  invasion.  From  that  time  onward  the 
successive  raids  which  were  made  upon  Upper  Italy  merely 
helped  to  increase  the  population  of  Venice.  By  degrees  new 
landing-places  were  made  in  the  lagoons  where  new  groups 
were  formed  upon  those  islets  that  still  remained  unoccupied. 
Such  was  the  growth  of  the  Confederation  of  the  Venetians. 
Each  islet  was  governed  by  a  deliberative  assembly  of  its 
inhabitants,  who  elected  one  or  more  tribunes  to  carry  on  the 
administration.  Upon  occasion  the  tribunes  of  the  different 

1  Reclus,  vol.  i.  p.  382. 


372     THE  COMMERCE  OF  THE  FREE  TOWNS 

islets  met  together  to  discuss  affairs  of  common  interest,  and 
there  were  likewise  general  assemblies  of  the  inhabitants  of 
all  the  islets.  This  federal  form  of  government  underwent 
many  modifications,  but  from  the  fifth  century  onwards  the 
lagoon-dwelling  people  went  on  steadily  increasing,  and  often 
unexpectedly  received  large  .reinforcements  of  inhabitants. 
The  towns  situated  on  the  mainland,  like  Amalfi,  Pisa,  and 
Genoa,  pursued  another  destiny  at  that  time  ;  owing  to  the 
fact  that  they  were  not  isolated  like  Venice,  the  successive 
invasions,  which  were  far  from  all  contributing  to  their  develop- 
ment, produced  a  very  different  effect  upon  them.  They  did 
not  begin  to  grow  till  the  ninth  century,  when  they  all  escaped 
from  the  Lombard  and  Carlo vingian  domination,  as  we  have 
already  said. 

From  another  point  of  view  also  Venice  had  the  advantage 
in  time.  The  Exarchate  of  Ravenna  and  the  Pentapolis, 
between  the  Apennines  and  the  Adriatic,  were  the  last  countries 
of  any  importance  in  Italy  which  remained  part  of  the  Empire 
of  the  East.  In  those  places  there  lingered  traditions  of  Roman 
and  Oriental  life  which  made  the  inhabitants  anxious  to  main- 
tain relations  with  the  Byzantine  world  of  the  most  intimate 
and  varied  kind.  The  people  of  those  countries  became  the 
special  and  chosen  customers  of  the  Venetians,  a  fact  which 
gave  Venice  a  great  advantage  over  the  towns  which  were 
separated  from  the  Roman  Empire  and  in  which  commerce 
did  not  flourish  till  later  (from  the  ninth  century  onwards),  when 
signs  of  progress  were  shown  by  the  "  barbarian  "  world. 

(c)  Her  advantage  from  the  point  of  view  of  trade. — Situated 
as  Venice  was  in  mid-ocean,  and  possessing  no  cultivable  land, 
her  only  resources  were  those  of  the  sea  :  fishing  and  maritime 
trade.  The  population  was  therefore  entirely  maritime.  Sea- 
faring absorbed  all  their  interest,  all  their  thought,  all  their 
energies  exclusively.  It  is  easy  to  see  what  an  advantage  in  the 
matter  of  maritime  commerce  this  specialisation,  which  was  thus 
absolutely  forced  upon  them,  gave  them  over  the  people  of  the 
towns  on  the  mainland,  who  had  a  great  variety  of  means  of 
existence  and  a  great  diversity  of  sources  of  wealth,  and  who 
only  "  took  to  the  sea  "  when  they  were  really  convinced  of 
the  increasing  advantages  of  commerce. 

2.  Security.  —  We    have   now    to    examine    the    material 


IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  373 

security  which  her  incomparable  maritime  situation  assured 
to  Venice.     At  a  time  when  security  depended  entirely  on 
private  means  of  defence — that  is  to  say,  throughout  the  Middle 
Ages — a  natural  situation  like  that  enjoyed  by  Venice  was  of 
the   highest   advantage.     With   the   advance   in   methods  of 
public     and    political,    national    and    international    defence 
which  countries  enjoy  to-day  independently  of  their  situation, 
whether  it  be  strong  or  weak,  this  advantage  has  disappeared. 
Venice,  set  in  the  midst  of  lagoons,  was  as  impregnable  by 
land  as  by  sea  before  the  military  inventions  of  modern  times 
were  introduced.     She  owed  her  safety  to  that  privilege.     When 
the  Franks  conquered  Lombardy,  they  recognised  that  they 
wTere  absolutely  powerless  to  take  Venice  from  the  land  side. 
Had  it  not  been  physically  impossible,  they  would  have  de- 
stroyed the  town,  so  annoyed  were  they  at  the  opposition  its 
inhabitants  made  to  their  intervention  in  the  affairs  of  Lom- 
bardy.    It  was  at  that  juncture  that  the  Venetians  separated 
themselves  from  the  population  of  the  shore,  which  had  till  then 
formed  a  single  confederation  with  that  of  the  islets.     Venice 
was  thus,  at  the  very  outset,  undoubtedly  saved  by  her  im- 
pregnable position.     When  the  Genoese  blockaded  the  whole 
Venetian  fleet  in  the  lagoons  of  Chioggia,  in  1380,  they  would 
have  completely  annihilated  it  had  they  been  able  to  penetrate 
into  the  harbour  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  an  attack  practicable. 
But  the  entrance  had  become  too  narrow  owing  to  the  immense 
deposits  of  sand  and  mud  which  protected  it.     Thus  Venice  was 
saved  at  the  zenith  of  her  power.     These  two  facts  are  enough 
to  make  clear  the  importance  of  her  position,  which  was  im- 
pregnable both  by  land  and  sea  ;   and  it  is  likewise  clear  that 
her  safety  depended  on  her  position  as  much  in  the  time  of  the 
greatest  power  of  her  republic  as  when  she  was  in  the  miserable 
condition  of    her  earliest   days.     Her  position  seems  all  the 
more  significant  when  we  remember  that  Tyre  and  Sidon  were 
also  founded  upon  islands,  and  that  the  power  of  Carthage 
would  not  have  perished  had  the  town  only  remained  impreg- 
nable.    But  neither  Tyre  nor  Sidon  nor  Carthage  had  sites 
to  compare  with  that  of  Venice,  cut  off  as  she  was  from  the 
land  by  estuaries  and  broad  reaches  of  mud,  and  separated 
from  the  sea  by  lidi,  long  banks  of  sand  and  mud  with  only 
narrow  passages  dividing  them. 


374     THE  COMMERCE  OF  THE  FREE  TOWNS 

A  third  cause  of  the  superiority  of  Venice  sprang  from  the 
two  former  causes,  her  early  development  and  her  position  of 
security. 

Owing  to  her  early  development  and  her  position  of 
security,  her  commerce  had  developed  considerably  more  than 
that  of  her  rivals  ;  in  Venice,  therefore,  it  was  incomparably 
more  difficult  for  one  private  man  to  raise  himself  above  all 
his  fellows.  Her  government,  in  spite  of  all  the  attempts  of 
the  ambitious,  remained  in  the  hands  of  several  men  repre- 
senting different  opinions,  and  escaped  autocracy,  properly 
so  called  ;  it  remained  republican,  but  it  became  an  oligarchy, 
after  being  at  first  democratic,  and  then,  with  the  rapid  increase 
of  prosperity,  aristocratic.  At  the  same  time  this  oligarchy, 
which  brought  greater  resources  into  play  in  governing,  and 
displayed  a  more  consistent  policy  than  pure  autocracy,  in  the 
end  became  at  least  quite  as  absolute  and  quite  as  tyrannical  ; 
so  that,  like  her  rivals,  Venice  in  the  end  adopted  a  policy  of 
repression  and  despotism,  though  later  than  they  did  and  under 
a  form  of  power  which  was  more  enduring.  We  shall  see  later 
on  how  the  extraordinary  evolution  which  the  world  under- 
went made  her  lose  the  advantages  of  her  precocious  develop- 
ment and  of  her  position  of  security,  and  was  also  the  irre- 
mediable cause  of  her  fall. 

Whilst  the  Mediterranean  was  thus  being  exploited  from 
the  point  of  view  of  commerce  by  tribes  who  had  not  been 
transformed  by  the  influence  of  the  Neo-Germans,  the 
latter  were  developing  another  maritime  region  for  their  own 
immediate  commerce :  the  northern  and  western  seas,  the 
Baltic,  the  North  Sea,  and  the  Atlantic. 

There  was  no  question  there  of  traffic  in  tropical  or  similar 
kinds  of  produce  ;  and,  consequently,  the  difference  was  very 
great. 

In  the  north,  the  commodities  of  trade  were  the  pro- 
ductions of  a  race  that  was  developing  with  energy — namely, 
the  Neo-German  race,  and  the  races  it  assimilated. 

The  North  Sea  was  their  centre  ;  it  was,  as  it  were,  an  inland 
sea,  lying  between  the  Norwegians,  the  Saxons,  the  Franks, 
and  the  Anglo-Saxons,  who  had  spread  all  round  about  it. 

The  land  which  projected  most  into  that  sea,  and  formed 
the  most  advanced  naval  position,  was  just  at  the  other 


IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  375 

extremity  of  the  imaginary  line  of  which  Venice  formed  the 
southern  extremity,  the  line  drawn  from  the  base  of  Jutland 
to  the  base  of  the  Adriatic.  There  the  three  Hanseatic 
towns — Lubeck,  Hamburg,  and  Bremen — arose,  right  in  the 
midst  of  Saxon  country  :  we  shall  now  see  what  resulted 
from  this. 

The  Saxons  did  not  create  the  commerce  of  the  northern 
seas  :  it  existed  before  the  formation  of  their  race.  The 
Goths,  those  Old  Germans  of  the  eastern  slope  of  Scandinavia, 
carried  on  the  commerce  of  the  Baltic  together  with  no  small 
amount  of  piracy.  They  exploited  the  natural  products  of 
the  coasts.  They  even  traded  with  distant  countries  in  one  of 
these  products,  amber,  which  may  be  compared  to  the  rich 
products  of  the  tropics  in  so  far  as  it  is  rare  and  of  peculiar 
value.  By  making  short  journeys  by  land,  they  penetrated — 
or  rather,  the  foreigners  from  the  east  penetrated — from  west 
to  east  and  from  north  to  south  by  following  the  slanting 
way  formed  by  the  great  rivers  of  Kussia,  some  of  which  flow 
into  the  Baltic,  while  others  flow  into  the  Black  Sea  or  the 
Caspian.  But  there  was  no  likelihood  of  the  commerce  of 
the  Baltic  competing  to  any  serious  extent  with  that  of  the 
Mediterranean,  because  the  opening  towards  the  east  formed 
by  the  Black  Sea  and  the  Caspian  was  too  much  encumbered 
with  obstacles  to  make  transport  easy.  So  the  two  zones  of 
commerce  were  sharply  divided  :  the  commerce  of  the  Medi- 
terranean and  the  commerce  of  the  northern  seas.  Venice, 
whose  energies  were  all  directed  towards  the  east,  and  who 
was  already  hard  pressed  on  the  west  by  Amain,  Pisa,  and 
Genoa,  scarcely  quitted  the  Mediterranean ;  she  did  indeed 
send  a  few  ships  to  Bruges,  in  Flanders,  but  she  had  no  settle- 
ment of  any  importance  on  the  Atlantic  coast.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  Scandinavians  only  very  rarely  entered  the  Medi- 
terranean on  some  venture  or  another,  and  could  not  be  counted 
as  regular  merchants.  When  the  Saxons,  who,  as  we  have  seen, 
were  always  from  the  earliest  times  drawn  rather  towards  the 
conquest  of  lands,  did  take  up  sea-trading,  for  reasons  we 
shall  presently  mention,  they  rapidly  took  the  lead  of  the 
Old  Germans  of  Eastern  Scandinavia,  the  Goths,  the  Danes, 
and  the  Swedes,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  latter  had  had 
a  considerable  start.  The  collision  between  the  Danes  and  the 


376     THE  COMMERCE  OF  THE  FREE  TOWNS 

Saxons  in  Great  Britain  is  a  sufficient  illustration  of  the  extent 
to  which  the  Danes  were  sailors  and  the  Saxons  were  farmers. 
But  when  races  belonging  to  different  types  of  society — the 
one  communal,  the  other  particularist — compete  with  one 
another,  any  start  that  the  one  may  have  over  the  other  counts 
for  very  little  :  the  Saxons  very  soon  overtook  and  passed  the 
Danes. 

The  Saxons  of  Great  Britain  were  not  the  first  to  take  up 
commerce  :  their  fertile  lands  gave  them  enough  to  do  ;  it  was 
the  Saxons  of  the  Saxon  plain  who,  owing  to  the  barrenness  of 
their  land  and  the  lack  of  an  aristocracy  with  landed  property 
and  keen  agricultural  instincts,  were  the  first  to  feel  the  need 
of  outlets  for  their  activity  in  the  world  outside.  By  imposing 
upon  them  an  aristocratic  Government,  whose  duty  it  was 
to  protect  the  country  within  and  without  by  a  public  force, 
Charlemagne  gave  them  an  outlet  in  the  form  of  fresh  employ- 
ments and  military  expeditions,  which  met  with  success  so 
long  as  they  were  under  the  leadership  'of  the  Saxon  dukes 
who  became  emperors,  and  the  Saxon  dukes  who  became 
the  opponents  of  the  Frankonian  emperors.  But  when 
feudalism,  in  its  movement  towards  emancipation,  gave  rise 
to  new  Saxon  emperors,  the  Saxons  rejected  the  new  dukes, 
and  returned  to  their  simple  private  life  with  its  entire  depend- 
ence upon  local  resources.  It  was  at  that  time  that  they 
sought  a  fresh  outlet  for  their  independence  in  maritime  com- 
merce. 

Circumstances  were  favourable  :  it  was  at  the  beginning 
jDfjthe  twelfth  century^ just^  when  industry  was  reviving  in  the 
towns  and  chivalry  was  opening  up  the  world.  And,  in 
Germany,  this  movement  coincided  with  the  degeneration  of 
royal  and  imperial  power,  whilst  in  France,  on  the  contrary, 
rpyalty  was  regaininjyjts  vigour  and  preparing  to  lay  hands 
upon  the  communes. 

The  emancipation  of  the  towns  in  Germany  went  on  in  very 
much  the  same  wayasin"France,  with  this  enormous  difference, 
that  they  had  the  power  of  maintaining  and  increasing  their 
liberty,  and  were  not  abruptly  checked  by  a  central  power. 

There  was  stilL-anpther  difference  worth  noting.  The 
towns  had  been  established  in  Germany  even  from  the  time 
of  Charlemagne,  as  a  means  of  taking  possession  of  the  land, 


IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  377 

asmilitary  settlements  and  administrative  colonies.  People 
had  to  be  enticed  to  come  to  them.  The  only  way  to  attract 
them  was  to  make  them  large  grants  of  land  within  the  city 
walls  or  in  the  neighbourhood,  so  that  for  the  time  being  they 
could  obtain  the  prime  necessaries  of  life,  and,  in  the  future, 
should  have  opportunities  of  making  profits  large  enough  to 
compensate  them  amply  for  the  estates  they  had  abandoned 
elsewhere.  That  was  the  origin  of  the  Bourgeoisie  Terrienne 
— that  is,  of  the  class  of  burgesses  with  landed  property  who 
were  not  artisans  and  merchants  pure  and  simple. 

These  burgesses  kept  a  strong  hold  upon  their  rights  over 
the  urban  land,  and  all  who  subsequently  came  there  were 
simply  artisans  of  different  trades,  tenants  of  one  kind  or 
another,  vassals,  so  to  speak,  of  the  burgesses  who  had  first 
settled  there  and  of  their  descendants.  They  formed  a  kind 
of  burgess-nobility,  which  governed  the  city  in  virtue  of 
its  rights  of  ownership. 

But  it  was  not  long  before  the  artisans,  especially  in  Saxon 
lands,  made  the  burgesses  open  their  gates  to  them,  and  nearly 
everywhere  in  the  course  of  the  fourteenth  century  they  suc- 
ceeded in  counterbalancing  the  influence  of  the  burgesses. 
The  fact  is  that  recruits  were  constantly  joining  the  ranks  of 
the  artisans  from  the  agricultural  population,  which  was  par- 
ticularist  or  had  been  assimilated  by  the  particularists,  with 
the  result  that  the  aspect  presented  by  the  towns  in  Germany 
was  utterly  different  from  that  of  the  commercial  cities  of 
the  Mediterranean,  Venice^  (jrenoa/  Pisa,  and  others,  which 
began  by  having  a  free  democratic  government  and  ended 
in  autocracy  or  oligarchy -and  a  policy  of  repression.  In  the_ 
case  of  Germany  the  towns  were  established  by  the  authority 
of  a  king  or  emperor,  were  carried  on  by  an  aristocracy  of 
burgesses,  and  ended  in  a  democracy  of  artisans. 

We  observed  that  the  three  towns  on  Saxon  territory  which 
were  situated  in  the  best  way  for  marine  commerce  were  Lubeck, 
Hamburg,  and  Bremen,  which  have  harbours  on  the  Trave, 
the  Elbe,  and  the  Weser  respectively.  They  stand  a  little 
way  back  from  the  sea,  so  that  they  were  safe  from  chance 
attacks  of  pirates  or  from  any  other  hostile  maritime  power. 
But  they  were  far  from  having  as  naturally  secure  a  position 
as  Venice. 


378     THE  COMMERCE  OF  THE  FREE  TOWNS 

How  was  it  that  these  towns,  which  entered  upon  their 
career  after  Venice,  and  had  not  her  security,  and  showed  a 
tendency  towards  democratic  government  and  increasing 
liberty,  how  was  it  that  they  were  able  to  outdo  their  rivals 
in  the  North  Sea,  defend  themselves  successfully  against  all 
their  enemies,  and  acquire  a  political  importance  equal  to  that 
of  sovereign  princes,  comparable  to  that  of  Venice,  and  capable 
of  disposing  of  crowns  on  occasion  ? 

They  encroached  on  no  one's  liberty  to  achieve  these  things, 
and  formed  no  central  power.  Therein,  indeed,  they  showed 
the  true  genius  of  the  particularist  races. 

The  towns_  carne  to  a  free  understanding  together,  but 
showed  vigorous  initiative  and  practical  common  sense  with 
regard  to  everything  which  was  of  real  common  interest  to 
them.  This  kind  of  union,  which  is  comparable,  though  it 
has  many  differences,  to  the  jinipn  of  the  States  of  North 
America^  ended  in  a  confederation,  I  might  almost  say  a 
najio^^of_ej^l3LJinited  towns._  It  was  the  celebrated  Han- 
seatic  League,  or  Teutonic  Hanse. 

The  majority  of  the  towns  were  purely  Saxon,  situated 
on  Saxon  territory  and  in  the  adjoining  lands,  where  the  Saxon 
race  and  Saxon  name  had  spread. 

Outside  Saxon  territory  there  were  a  good  number^pf 
towns  on  the  southern  shore  of  the  Baltic  with  nonr&axxm 
inhabitants  which  adhered  to  the  league,  but  they  had  been 
founded  to  a  great  extent  by  Saxon  emigrants. 

Thetowns  situated  OTL  the  Rhine,  where  it  passes  near 
Saxon  land,  from  Nimwegen  to  Cologne,  alsojoined  the  league, 
and  they,  tocrwere  of  Neo-Germanic  formation. 

Another  league  was  formed  in  Germany  by  the  towns 
along  the  middle  part  oJLthe_JilLine,  and  another  by  the  towns 
on  the  tributaries  of  the  Upper  Danube  ;  they  were  all  com- 
mercial and  made  use  of  navigation.  They  were  called  respec- 
tively the  Rhenish  League  and  the  Swabian  League.  But  they 
never  grew  strong,  and  only  lasted  a  short  time.  They  had 
not  the  same  natural  importance  as  the  northern  towns  which 
were  situated  near  the  sea,  but  it  must  also  be  taken  into 
account  that  they  were  not  inhabited  by  that  particularist 
race  which  found  means  to  create  numbers  of  towns  all  over 
the  barren  Saxon  plain.  All  the  towns  of  Hanover  which 


IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  379 

are  still  of  some  importance,  those  of  Westphalia  and  Eastern 
Saxony,  belonged  to  the  Hanseatic  League. 

On  becoming  members  of  the  Hanseatic  League,  the  towns 
kept  their  absolute  autonomy  and  whatever  variety  of  govern- 
ment they  possessed.  They  were  at  liberty  to  leave  the 
league.  They  could  even  re-enter  it,  but  on  condition  that 
there  were  no  decisive  reasons  connected  with  their  late  with- 
drawal against  their  readmission.  The  league  could  thus 
be  enlarged  or  restricted  according  to  the  need  of  the  times, 
without  any  commotion  or  disturbance  either  within  or  without. 

The  chief  strength  of  its  power  was  exerted  in  two  directions 
mainly  : 

1.  It  defended  itself  against  the  political  rivalry_of  the 
Daneg_  and   the   Swede^.     It  had    therein   to    deal    with    a 
force  which  was  able  to  command  two  kingdoms,  and  often 
even  united  them  ;    the  league,  however,  attained  its  end  in 
spite  of  the  necessity  of  constantly  renewing  the  struggle. 
Its  supreme  efforts  were  above  all  directed  towards  preventing 
the  formation  of  the  celebrated  union  of  all  the  States  of  Scan- 
dinavia, including  Norway.     Though  the  league  was  unsuccess- 
ful, it  managed  to  secure  all  the  rights  which  were  necessary 
for  its  commerce  with  Scandinavian  lands.     It  was  in  the 
course  of  this  severe  struggle  that  the  Hansej,Mcs_reached  the 
zenith  of  their  power.     In  1385  they  held  a  diet  at  Lubeck 
at  which  several  crowned  heads  appeared  and  to  which  other 
sovereigns  sent  ambassadors  to  represent  them. 

2.  The  league  obtained  outside  the  associated  towns  four 
large  markets  where  the  privileges  it  had  secured  made  it  all- 
powerful  :    London,    Bruges,  Bergen,  and    Novgorod.     They 
are  sufficient  proof  of  the  extent  of  its  commerce. 

The  Saxons  of  Great  Britain,  as  we  have  said,  were  entirely 
taken  up  with  the  development  of  their  fertile  land,  with  the 
improvement  of  their  farms,  but  the  time  came  when  they 
were  able  and  obliged  to  think  of  something  beyond.  It  was 
they — as  we  should  have  expected — who  became  the  new 
and  most  formidable  rivals  which  the  Hanseatic  League  had 
to  encounter.  In  1436  England  withdrew  the  rights  which 
she  previously  granted  to  the  Hanseatics,  and  herself  began  to 
use  navigation.  This,  however,  brings  us  to  modern  times, 
at  which  we  must  stop  for  the  moment.  But  though  the 


380     THE  COMMERCE  OF  THE  FREE  TOWNS 

English  competed  with  and  showed  themselves  superior  to 
the  Saxons,  they  did  not  destroy  their  activity  upon  the  seas, 
as  we  shall  see. 

The  fact  remains  that  the  Hanseatic  League_continued  its_ 

development  till  the  end  of  the  Middl^Ages,  without  interfering 

with  the~public  liberty.  The  less  important,  less  active  towns 
gradually  dropped  away  from  the  union  to  follow  the  very 
diverse  fortunes  which  were  usually  imposed  upon  them  by 
the  reviving  central  power,  by  the  emperors  or  kings  of  modern 
times.  But  the  jree  port  of  Hamburg  is  still  a  splendid  proof 
to  this  day  of  the  benefit  of  the  institutions  of  the  famous 
league.  Those  who  wish  to  get  some  idea  of  it  cannot  do 
better  than  refer  to  a  work  recently  published  by  M.  Paul  de 
Rouziers  :  Hambourg  et  VAllemagne  contemporaine.1 

The  continuation  of  our  history  brings  us  to  an  event  which 
had  the  most  extraordinary  influence  upon  the  development 
of  the  particularist  race  at  the  present  day,  and  which  intro- 
duces us  to  modern  times  :  the  discovery  of  the  East  and 
West  Indies. 

1  See  especially  pp.  202,  210  if. 


CHAPTER   XXIV 
THE  DISCOVERY  OF  THE  EAST  AND  WEST  INDIES 

WE  have  pursued  the  study  of  the  agricultural,  industrial, 
and  commercial  particularist  peoples  up  to  the  end  of 
the  Middle  Ages — that  is  to  say,  to  the  end  of  the  domination  of 
feudalism  and  the  coming  of  the  great  European  monarchies 
of  modern  times. 

We  have  now  to  see  what  became  of  those  people  under  the 
new  regime. 

Since  the  area  open  to  the  influence  of  the  particularists 
was  then  about  to  be  enormously  widened,  our  first  step  must 
be  to  form  some  idea  of  this  extension  of  area.  How  did  it 
come  about  ? 

I  refer,  of  course,  to  the  discovery  of  the  East  and  West 
Indies,  which  is  naturally  connected  with  our  comparative 
study  of  Venice  and  the  Hanseatic  League. 

We  have  already  said  that  the  products  of  the  tropics  and 
of  the  neighbouring  regions  have  been,  throughout  all  the 
epochs  of  history,  the  great  and  unrivalled  objects  of  commerce. 
We  have  seen  the  advantages  Venice  derived  from  that  commerce. 
We  have  also  formed  some  notion  of  the  singular  vital  energy 
which  the  Hanseatic  League  must  have  derived  from  the  par- 
ticularist form  of  society  in  order  to  reach  such  a  height  of 
commercial  prosperity  as  it  did  without  having  had  access  to 
tropical  countries.  But  we  shall  form  a  still  better  idea  of  the 
importance  of  this  commerce  with  the  tropics  when  we  see  it 
closed  for  Venice — a  blow  which  crushed  her — and  opened 
for  our  people  of  the  north,  whose  extraordinary  development 
at  the  present  day  is  due  to  it. 

However,  as  this  chapter  will  be  only  preliminary  to  the 
study  of  the  modern  phase  of  the  particularist  formation,  we 
shall  stop  exactly  at  the  moment  when  the  new  field  of  action 


382  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  THE 

opens  before  the  Saxon  race.  We  shall  see  a  little  later  what 
it  achieved  there. 

In  order  to  get  a  good  idea  of  the  relations  of  Europe  with 
the  tropics,  it  is  necessary  to  look  at  the  map  of  the  world. 

The  tropical  region  lies  between  the  first  twenty-three  and 
a  half  degrees  to  the  north  and  to  the  south  of  the  line  of  the 
equator ;  but  the  region  lying  between  the  twenty-third  and 
thirtieth  degrees  on  both  sides  of  the  equator  may  be  considered 
to  have  practically  the  same  climate — that  is,  a  mean  annual 
temperature  of  20°  above  zero  (centigrade).  Now  one  glance 
at  the  map  will  at  once  show  how  far  to  the  north  of  that  zone 
Europe  is  situated. 

But  further  :  if  one  looks  to  see  what  lands  lie  directly  south 
of  Europe  in  the  tropical  or  semi-tropical  zone,  one  finds  that 
they  are  very  deficient  in  some  ways.  In  the  first  place,  there  is 
the  desert  of  Sahara.  Lower  down  there  is  a  great  central 
continent,  the  Soudan,  into  which  it  is  extremely  difficult  to 
penetrate.  Lastly  come  the  equatorial  forests.  Beyond  is 
the  other  hemisphere,  where  the  same  conditions  are  repro- 
duced, though  in  a  modified  form  and  in  an  inverse  order.  We 
need  not  take  into  account  East  Central  Africa,  which  is  largely 
deprived  of  its  tropical  products  by  the  altitude  of  its  land. 

If,  however,  we  turn  from  Europe  to  Asia,  we  see  that,  on  the 
contrary,  the  tropical  countries — India,  Indo-China,  Southern 
Persia,  and  Arabia — are,  as  it  were,  broken  up  by  the  sea 
and  are  easily  accessible  along  their  coast-line.  Except  for 
the  Arabian  Desert — which,  by  the  way,  merchants  are  not 
obliged  to  cross — all  these  countries  are  conveniently  supplied 
with  water  and  yield  the  products  peculiar  to  the  tropics. 

The  conclusion  drawn  from  this  examination  is  very  simple  : 
it  is  that  as  far  as  Europe  is  concerned,  the  practicable  and 
productive  tropical  or  semi-tropical  countries  lie,  not  to  the 
south,  but  to  the  east.  Thus  we  find  that  the  products  of  the 
tropics  are  not  talked  of  in  Europe  as  products  of  the  south, 
but  as  products  of  the  east,  and  that  accounts  for  the  fame 
of  Oriental  trade. 

I  am  now  leaving  the  New  World  out  of  consideration  since 
we  have  not  yet  spoken  of  its  discovery.  We  are  limiting 
ourselves  to  the  world  known  to  the  Middle  Ages. 

But  we  must  push  our  examination  further. 


EAST  AND  WEST  INDIES  383 

In  order  to  reach  the  east,  the  peoples  of  Europe  have  one 
of  the  most  convenient  of  roads,  the  Mediterranean,  whose 
praises  we  need  not  here  rehearse.  However,  that  sea  does  not 
go  so  far  as  the  Asiatic  lands  which  yield  tropical  products. 
For  that  reason,  Europeans  could  not  carry  on  trade  with  the 
tropics  by  that  route,  except  by  getting  into  touch  with  the 
people  occupying  the  space  between  the  Mediterranean  and 
those  distant  countries.  It  is  therefore  essential  to  form  an 
idea  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  intervening  country  and  the 
routes  through  it. 

In  the  Middle  Ages  all  the  intervening  lands  were  under  the 
domination  of  the  Arabs  or  of  tribes  such  as  the  Seldjoucides 
and  Tartars,  who  had  become  assimilated  with  them,  and  had 
settled  in  the  central  parts  of  nearer  Asia.  In  fact,  whilst  the 
German  invaders  were  taking  possession  of  the  western  part  of 
Europe,  and  the  Slav  invaders  were  filling  the  eastern  part, 
the  enormous  Arab  invasion  begun  by  Mahomet  was  spreading 
by  the  south  from  the  basin  of  the  Caspian  to  the  Pyrenees, 
so  that  the  whole  of  Europe  and  the  Asiatic  and  African  lands 
bordering  on  the  Mediterranean  were  divided  between  three 
great  groups  of  people  :  the  Germans,  the  Slavs,  and  the  Arabs. 

Within  this  circle  of  "  barbarians  "  remained  enclosed  the 
last  remains  of  the  Roman  Empire,  under  the  name  of  the 
Grecian  or  Byzantine  Empire.  It  was  reduced  to  the  shores 
of  Asia  Minor  and  the  ancient  countries  of  Thrace,  Macedonia, 
Greece,  and  Magna  Graecia  (Lower  Italy). 

The  Arabs  of  the  Arabian  peninsula,  who  had  been  bred  up 
partly  as  nomads  whose  work  consisted  in  transporting  goods 
across  the  desert,  and  partly  as  sedentaries  who  traded  along  the 
seacoasts,  were  therefore  admirably  fitted  to  play  the  part  of 
intermediaries  in  European  commerce  between  the  Mediter- 
ranean and  the  tropical  countries  of  the  east. 

The  intervening  region  which  they  occupied  is,  generally 
speaking,  a  region  of  arid  steppes.  Here  and  there  are  real 
deserts,  which,  like  archipelagoes  and  promontories,  unite 
the  two  great  expanses  of  desert,  the  Sahara  and  the  desert  of 
Gobi,  one  to  the  south,  the  other  to  the  north,  as  if  they  were 
two  great  continents.  But,  unlike  the  Sahara  and  the  Gobi,  the 
line  of  small  deserts  which  stretches  from  the  one  to  the  other  is 
divided  by  routes  which  cut  through  it  from  east  to  west.  These 


384  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  THE 

dividing  routes  consist  of  large  rivers,  which  not  only  serve  as 
water-ways,  but  produce  on  their  banks  an  abundance  of  pasture 
land,  and,  when  cultivated,  an  abundance  of  vegetable  growth 
sufficient  to  yield  an  ample  supply  of  food  for  the  large  and 
numerous  caravans  which  are  necessary  for  active  trade  on  a 
large  scale.  This  explains  why  Arabian  commerce  is  much  more 
flourishing  in  the  east  than  in  the  Sahara,  apart  from  the  fact 
that  the  tropical  countries  of  Asia  are  far  more  fertile  than  those 
of  Africa,  as  we  have  already  said. 

The  three  great  routes  penetrating  from  the  basin  of  the 
Mediterranean  to  the  tropics  or  to  similar  regions  of  Asia,  are  the 
three  valleys  of  the  Euphrates,  the  Nile,  and  the  Oxus,  now 
called  the  Amu-Daria. 

For  a  still  primitive  people  the  Euphrates  is  the  simplest  of 
these  routes.  It  was  therefore  the  most  used  in  ancient  times 
and  in  the  Middle  Ages. 

It  is  the  simplest,  because  it  is  very  easy  to  coast  along  the 
European  shore  of  the  Mediterranean,  going  from  island  to 
island  through  the  Grecian  Archipelago  to  the  eastern  extremity 
of  the  Mediterranean.  The  landing-places  there,  it  must  be  said, 
were  more  practicable  for  the  small  craft  of  early  times  than  for 
the  great  vessels  of  the  present  day  ;  and  from  these  the  desert, 
which  is  in  no  way  very  terrible,  can  be  crossed  by  easy  stages 
till  the  valley  of  the  Euphrates  is  reached.  The  route  most 
generally  used  in  the  Middle  Ages  was  that  which  passed  through 
Alexandretta  and  Aleppo  or  by  Beirut  and  Damascus.  Once 
the  Euphrates  is  reached,  the  traveller  has  only  to  follow  the 
course  of  the  river  in  order  to  reach  India  on  the  left  and  Arabia 
on  the  right  by  continuing  his  journey  by  one  or  the  other  side 
of  the  Persian  Gulf. 

The  second  route  for  penetrating  to  the  east  is  on  the  south, 
by  the  Nile. 

The  traveller  used  to  go  up  the  Nile  as  far  as  Memphis,  which 
is  now  replaced  by  Cairo  ;  in  more  remote  times,  he  went  as  far 
as  Thebes,  and  from  there  a  short  journey  across  the  desert 
brought  him  to  the  Eed  Sea,  which  took  him  to  the  great  sea  of 
the  east,  the  Indian  Ocean.  It  was  a  less  direct  route  than  that 
of  the  Euphrates  and  less  easy  because  navigation  in  the  Red 
Sea  and  across  the  Indian  Ocean  was  dangerous  and  required 
skill. 


EAST  AND  WEST  INDIES  385 

The  third  route  lies  much  farther  north  :  it  is  that  of  the 
Oxus  or  Amu-Daria. 

In  order  to  reach  it,  it  is  necessary  to  go  right  across  the 
Black  Sea — the  Pontus  Euxinus  of  ill-fame  ;  then  to  traverse  the 
space  between  that  sea  and  the  Caspian ;  finally,  to  cross  the 
Caspian.  There  the  traveller  finds,  not  the  Oxus  itself,  which 
has  been  lost  in  the  sand  and  ceased  to  flow  into  the  Caspian  from 
time  immemorial,  but  the  old  bed  of  the  Lower  Oxus.  Rivers 
of  this  sort,  which  are  absorbed  by  the  earth,  keep  the  lower 
lands  through  which  they  used  to  flow  in  a  moist  and  fertile 
condition  by  a  process  of  infiltration,  so  that  the  Arabs  give  the 
same  name  of  Ouadi  to  the  flowing  river  and  to  the  still  moistened 
valley  from  which  the  river  has  disappeared.  From  the  Oxus, 
India  can  only  be  reached  by  going  round  or  by  crossing  the 
enormous  mountain  chain  of  Afghanistan. 

There  were  alternative  routes  between  the  Black  Sea  and  the 
Caspian :  one  could  go  by  the  Rion,  the  Phasis  of  antiquity, 
at  the  mouth  of  which  is  situated  Poti,  and  by  Kura — that  is  the 
route  the  railway  now  follows ;  or  else  one  could  go  into  the 
Sea  of  Azov  and  ascend  the  Don  to  the  place  where  it  comes 
nearest  to  the  Volga,  and  then  go  down  the  Volga  to  the  Caspian. 

There  is  still  another  route  to  the  east  which  might  be  men- 
tioned as  well  as  the  three  great  routes  I  have  just  described, 
but  it  is  composite  in  some  degree.  It  goes  north  from  Trebi- 
zond,  a  port  on  the  Black  Sea,  to  the  valley  of  the  Tigress, 
crossing  the  mountains  of  Armenia,  and  from  there  descends 
to  the  Euphrates. 

The  Arabs,  then,  were  at  once  masters  of  the  Euphrates, 
the  Nile,  and  the  Oxus. 

But  it  must  be  well  understood  that  they  would  have  liked 
nothing  better  than  to  be  masters  of  the  Mediterranean  itself, 
for  the  shipping  trade  had  taught  them  navigation  ;  they  were 
the  great  navigators  of  the  Red  Sea  and  Indian  Ocean,  and  those 
seas,  as  we  have  said,  demanded  skilful  sailors. 

So,  at  the  time  of  their  great  conquest,  when  they  held  the 
land  stretching  from  Turkestan  to  Spain  by  the  north  of  Africa, 
they  attempted  to  get  possession  of  the  Mediterranean. 

They  first  had  to  fight  with  the  Grecian  Empire ,  the  Byzantines. 

We  know  that,  after  the  submission  of  Greece,  the  Romans 
owed  their  naval  power  to  the  Greek  Navy.  This  maritime 
25 


386  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  THE 

force  continued  to  work  with  great  activity  during  and  after  the 
invasions  of  the  barbarians,  who  were  scarcely  at  all  skilled  in 
navigation,  with  the  exception  of  the  Danes  and  Normans,  who 
appeared  later  and  did  not  go  outside  the  north  seas.  Thus, 
at  the  beginning  of  the  Middle  Ages  trade  in  the  Mediterranean 
was  carried  on  by  the  Byzantines. 

The  fact  that  they,  as  it  were,  specialised  in  navigation, 
explains  how  it  was  that  the  islands,  the  peninsulas,  and  the 
shores  of  the  Mediterranean,  Sicily,  the  extremity  of  Italy  and  of 
Spain,  and  the  African  coast,  were  the  only  places  at  which  they 
gained  successes  over  the  barbarians  and  made  them  retire. 

The  Arabs,  at  that  time  called  Saracens,  then  began  the 
struggle  with  the  Byzantines  by  sea.  They  succeeded  so  well 
that  they  took  away  all  their  possessions  in  the  south  and  east  of 
the  Mediterranean  :  Cyprus,  Crete,  Sicily,  Sardinia,  Spain,  the 
African  coast,  Egypt,  and  Syria.  The  possessions  of  the  Byzan- 
tines were  confined  to  the^Egean  Sea  and  the  Gulf  of  Tarentum. 

The  maritime  commerce  of  the  Arabs  with  the  Germanic 
race  on  the  northern  shore  of  the  Mediterranean  did  not  prosper, 
because  the  Arabs  behaved  far  more  like  pirates,  like  conquerors, 
like  enemies  of  the  name  of  Christian,  than  like  traders.  Even 
those  who,  rarely  enough,  behaved  in  a  less  repulsive  manner, 
were  not  received  with  favour  because  of  their  kinship  with  their 
dreaded  compatriots. 

Under  these  circumstances,  Venice,  in  her  retired  position  at 
the  base  of  the  Adriatic  and  protected  by  her  lagoons,  was  able  to 
make  a  commercial  connection  with  the  inhabitants  of  Germany. 
She  was  able  without  much  trouble  to  bar  the  sea  she  ruled 
against  the  Arab  pirates,  and  act  policeman  in  that  arm  of  the 
sea  where  there  are  few  refuges  for  a  fleet  between  the  slope  of 
the  Illyrian  Alps  and  that  of  the  Apennines.  Her  vessels 
could  sail  freely  right  down  the  Adriatic,  and  on  issuing  from  that 
sea  they  entered  Byzantine  waters,  where  they  traded  directly 
with  the  Greeks. 

The  Byzantines,  the  Arabs,  and  the  Venetians  thus  shared 
the  Mediterranean  :  the  Byzantines  held  the  north-east,  the 
Arabs  the  south,  and  the  Venetians  the  north-west. 

Of  these  three  maritime  powers,  Venice,  which  was  nothing 
more  than  a  republic  that  had  been  founded  on  a  marsh,  must 
necessarily  have  been  the  least  for  a  long  time. 


EAST  AND  WEST  INDIES  387 

But  what  a  change  came  about,  what  a  bustle  there  was  in 
every  part  of  the  Mediterranean  when  chivalry  reached  its 
shores  !  The  Normans  of  Kobert  Guiscard  began  by  taking 
Magna  Grsecia  from  the  Byzantines  and  Sicily  from  the  Arabs. 
Then  the  Crusaders  conquered  Palestine,  Syria,  and  the  greater 
part  of  the  Empire  of  Constantinople.  Under  Saint  Louis 
they  threatened  the  coasts  of  Egypt  and  Africa.  This  meant 
the  ruin  of  Byzantine  and  Greek  trade  on  the  Mediterranean  ; 
the  field  remained  clear  for  Venice  and  her  few  rivals  on  the 
west  :  Amalfi,  Pisa,  and  Genoa. 

So  it  was  to  chivalry,  as  I  indicated  before,  that  was  due 
the  triumph  of  the  commerce  of  the  western  people  over  that 
of  the  Arabs  and  Byzantines  in  the  Mediterranean. 

But  this  re-establishment  of  the  commerce  of  the  west  with 
the  tropics  rested  upon  a  very  fragile  basis  :  chivalry,  in  a 
word.  The  conquests  of  the  knights,  which  were,  moreover, 
very  superficial,  did  not  extend  beyond  the  coasts.  The  Arabs 
remained  masters  of  the  interior  of  the  region  lying  between  the 
Mediterranean  and  the  tropical  countries. 

So  much  so  that,  though  the  western  peoples  received 
products  from  India,  Arabia,  and  Ethiopia,  they  had  no  sure 
and  personal  knowledge  of  those  countries,  which  remained 
unknown  to  them,  just  as  the  centre  of  Africa  was  unknown  to 
us  a  hundred  years  ago. 

In  the  sixth  century,  shortly  before  the  invasion  of  the 
Arabs,  a  merchant  of  Alexandria,  who  had  traded  in  India 
and  subsequently  become  a  monk,  wrote  down  all  the  experi- 
ences of  his  journeys.  His  name  was  Cosmas,  and  he  was  nick- 
named Indicopleustes  —  that  is,  the  Indian  navigator.  From  his 
time  to  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century,  when  the  Indies  were 
discovered,  as  we  shall  see,  no  European  capable  of  giving  any 
useful  information  had  penetrated  into  those  countries,  or  at 
any  rate  had  returned  from  them. 

It  is  obvious  how  precarious  this  newly  opened  trade  with 
the  tropics  must  have  been,  since  the  western  peoples  only  held 
the  Mediterranean  in  virtue  of  the  ephemeral  successes  of 
chivalry,  and  had  not  been  able  to  get  any  firm  footing  in  the 
interior  of  the  country  lying  between  that  sea  and  the  tropical 
regions.  The  Arabs  had  only  to  retake  possession  of  the  shores 
and  islands  at  the  eastern  end  of  the  Mediterranean  in  order  to 


*  THE 

•     '       ' 


388  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  THE 

ruin  it  utterly.  And  they  did  not  wait  long.  The  decay  of 
chivalry  rapidly  set  in  :  we  know  how  inevitable  it  was.  As 
early  as  1187  Jerusalem  again  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Saracens. 
As  early  as  1261  Constantinople  was  reoccupied  by  the  Greeks, 
who  had  moved  the  seat  of  their  empire  to  Nicea. 

But  this  natural  decay  was  seriously  aggravated  by  the 
decisive  entry  of  the  Turks  into  the  field  of  action,  that  is 
the  inhabitants  of  Turkestan,  who  had  been  trying  for  a  long 
time  to  supplant  the  Arabs,  whose  subjects  they  were. 
Brought  up  as  they  had  been  in  the  great  central  steppe  of 
Asia,  they  were  not  trained  to  commerce  like  the  Arabs  ;  they 
were  coarse  and  primitive,  and  incapable  of  leading  any  but  a 
military  and  domineering  life  when  they  left  the  isolation  of 
their  pastures.  In  1254  the  Mamelukes,  a  band  of  soldiers 
principally  composed  of  Turks,  got  possession  of  the  govern- 
ment of  Egypt.  In  1299  Othman,  the  leader  of  the  band  of 
Turks  called  Ottomans,  set  up  his  power  in  the  centre  of  Asia 
Minor,  at  Konieh,  the  Iconium  of  antiquity. 

There  is  no  need  to  relate  how,  by  the  efforts  of  the  Mame- 
lukes in  the  south  and  the  Ottomans  in  the  north,  the  whole  of 
the  east  of  the  Mediterranean  was  taken  at  one  swoop  from 
the  Latins,  the  Greeks,  the  knights,  both  laymen  and  eccle- 
siastics, and  the  merchants  of  Venice  and  Genoa.  It  is  a  cele- 
brated chapter  in  history  ;  it  marks  the  beginning  of  what  has 
been  called  the  Modern  Age. 

It  was  in  this  way  that  the  commerce  of  the  Eastern 
Mediterranean  was  opened  to  Venice  and  her  rivals  of  the  west 
by  chivalry,  and  was  again  closed  to  them  owing  to  the  decad- 
ence of  chivalry  and  the  domination  and  conquests  of  the 
Turks. 

The  invasion  of  the  Turks  had  a  much  wider  influence  than 
the  internal  causes  of  the  fall  of  Venice,  for  if  the  access  to  the 
east  had  remained  free  to  the  western  peoples,  Venice,  whose 
decay  was  due  to  her  bad  social  constitution,  could  have  been 
replaced,  as  far  as  her  commerce  in  the  Mediterranean  was 
concerned,  by  some  other  town  in  the  west  which  was  socially 
better  constituted.  But  in  the  series  of  events  I  have  described, 
it  was  not  merely  Venice  which  perished,  it  was  practically  all 
the  commerce  of  the  people  on  the  Mediterranean  with  the 
inhabitants  of  the  country  lying  between  it  and  the  tropics. 


EAST  AND  WEST  INDIES  389 

The  Turks  did  not  keep  up  that  trade  because  they  were 
pirates  and  conquerors  in  the  main,  even  far  more  than  were 
the  Arabs. 

It  still  remains  to  be  explained  how  it  was  that  the  Euro- 
peans, who  could  not  have  brought  themselves  to  give  up  com- 
merce with  the  tropics  for  ever,  did  not  make  a  supreme  effort, 
after  the  first  successes  of  the  Turks,  to  open  afresh  the  route 
to  the  east  from  the  side  of  the  Mediterranean. 

Here  we  must  return  to  our  examination  of  the  map. 

At  the  extreme  west  of  Europe,  there  is  a  country  which 
affords  an  extraordinary  parallel  to  Syria.  Just  as  Syria  is 
situated  at  the  end  of  the  Mediterranean  with  its  long  line  of 
coast  and  its  harbours,  so  Portugal  is  situated  on  the  west  by 
the  entrance  to  the  Mediterranean,  and  with  its  long  coast-line 
running  in  an  almost  parallel  direction  :  it  seems  like  another 
Syria  projecting  westwards  at  the  head  of  the  Mediterranean. 

To  complete  the  comparison,  just  as  the  coast  of  Syria  was 
at  one  end  of  the  line  of  traffic  used  by  the  merchants  of  the 
Mediterranean,  so  Portugal  was  at  the  end  of  the  line  of  traffic 
used  by  the  merchants  of  the  North  Sea  and  the  Atlantic. 
The  influence  of  the  Hanseatic  League,  which  reached  from 
Novgorod  to  Lisbon,  did  not  extend  beyond  its  shores.  Lisbon 
was  the  meeting-place  of  the  northern  sailor  and  the  Oriental : 
from  that  point  Venice  acted  as  intermediary  across  the 
Mediterranean. 

The  last  point  of  similarity  is  that,  like  Syria,  Portugal 
was  an  Arab  country.  The  Arabs  had  found  their  way  from 
the  end  of  the  Mediterranean  to  its  beginning  by  the  direct 
route  across  the  steppes  and  by  the  shore  of  Northern  Africa. 
Moreover,  it  is  a  fact  that  the  Spanish  peninsula  belongs  to 
the  African  continent  from  the  point  of  view  of  its  physical 
constitution.  It  is  like  a  thick  block  of  land,  loosely  detached 
from  the  main  mass  of  Africa  and  feebly  welded  on  to  Europe 
by  the  clumsy  mass  of  the  Pyrenees.  It  is  really  an  advanced 
post  of  the  east  towards  the  west  and  north. 

So  it  is  quite  natural  to  find  that  similar  events  take  place  in 
Portugal  to  those  which  we  have  just  described  as  occurring 
in  the  east. 

In  the  first  place,  it  was  chivalry  which  opened  that  mari- 
time station  to  the  commerce  of  the  north,  just  as  it  had  opened 


390  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  THE 

the  maritime  stations  at  the  eastern  end  of  the  Mediterranean 
to  the  commerce  of  the  Western  Mediterranean.  Here,  as 
there,  merchants  came  with  the  knights  and  in  their  tracks. 

Towards  the  end  of  the  eleventh  century,  at  the  time  when 
chivalry  was  at  the  height  of  its  vigour  in  its  early  career, 
a  lord  of  the  Burgundian  branch  of  the  Capetian  family.  Henry 
of  Burgundy,  great-grandson  of  Kobert  the  Pious,  King  of 
France,  came  and  offered  his  valiant  services  against  the  Arabs 
in  Spain  to  the  head  of  the  small  Christian  State  called  the 
kingdom  of  Castille,  which,  thanks  to  the  heroic  efforts  of 
four  centuries,  had  spread  from  the  narrow  chain  of  mountains 
of  Asturias  to  the  valley  of  the  Douro. 

As  a  reward  for  his  exploits,  he  received  in  marriage  the 
daughter  of  the  King  of  Castille,  and  her  dowry  was  a  portion 
of  the  lands  which  he  had  conquered,  the  coast  at  the  end  of 
the  valley  of  the  Douro  where  is  situated  the  ancient  port  of 
Oporto,  also  called  Porto-Calle.  From  that  place  he  took  the 
title  of  Count  of  Portugal.  All  the  rest  of  the  land  which  he 
captured  from  the  Arabs  along  the  coast  to  its  southern 
extremity  was  granted  him  in  addition. 

That  was  the  origin  of  Portugal.  The  way  in  which  it  was 
founded  was  very  much  like  the  establishment  of  a  principality 
in  the  Holy  Land. 

But  the  conquerors  of  Portugal  had  a  great  advantage 
over  those  of  Syria  and  Palestine — namely,  that  its  original 
population  was  composed  of  sedentary  races.  Not  only  could 
the  knights,  on  account  of  the  proximity  of  the  western  peoples, 
introduce  agricultural  immigrants  into  the  country,  but  it  had 
been  originally  peopled  with  Iberians,  Celts,  Swabians,  and 
Visigoths,  who  had  all  in  turn  been  reduced  to  a  sedentary 
life.  As  for  the  Moors,  who  had  established  themselves  among 
the  earlier  inhabitants  and  whom  the  knights  conquered  but 
did  not  expel,  they  had  been  brought  or  driven  there  by  the 
Arabs,  but  they  were  chiefly  Berberians  or  Moroccans  who 
had  been  sedentary  for  a  long  time  in  the  mountain  land  of  the 
north  of  Africa.  All  this  gave  the  country,  and  later  on  the 
kingdom,  of  Portugal  a  power  of  endurance  and  a  power  of 
resistance  which  were  lacking  to  the  principalities  of  the  Holy 
Land.  It  had  not  the  nomads  of  Turkestan  at  its  heels. 

The  first  successors  of  Henry  of  Burgundy,  the  founder  of 


EAST  AND  WEST  INDIES  391 

Portugal,  were  naturally  anxious  to  perfect  their  people  in 
agriculture.  It  was  still  the  first  epoch  of  chivalry,  and  the  lords 
had  not  all  forgotten  the  traditions  of  farming  handed  down 
from  their  near  ancestors.  The  sovereigns  of  Portugal  dis- 
played such  marked  energy  in  that  direction  that  history  has 
kept  the  memory  of  it  sacred.  All  the  evidence  of  history 
proves  that  they  thereby  assured  Portugal's  future.  One  of  its 
kings,  who  lived  at  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century,  received 
the  name  of  Denis  the  Ploughman,  and  his  wife,  the  saintly 
Elizabeth,  the  title  of  "  Patroness  of  Ploughmen." 

But  though  these  people  had  a  natural  talent  for  farming, 
they  showed  but  little  power  of  organisation.  They  all  be- 
longed to  the  patriarchal  type.  And  the  lords  in  search  of 
adventure,  who  came  to  help  the  king  in  his  conquest  of  his 
States,  inclined  more  and  more,  as  time  went  on,  towards 
the  type  of  the  knight  pure  and  simple  who  performed  exploits. 
None  of  these  people  were  in  any  degree  capable  of  introducing 
into  the  country  the  genuine  feudal  system,  still  less  the  Saxon 
system.  The  measures  adopted  by  the  sovereigns  in  order 
to  develop  agriculture  are  very  much  like  those  which  an 
Emperor  of  Kussia  would  adopt.  They  reveal  a  master,  little 
short  of  an  autocrat,  who  is  trying  to  lead  a  band,  a  badly 
disciplined  army :  he  evidently  has  none  of  the  qualities  pos- 
sessed by  Charlemagne,  the  great  landowner,  who  set  in  motion 
by  the  force  of  his  own  example  a  class  of  powerful  agricultural 
overseers.  Koyal  commands  were  issued  like  ukases  ;  they 
determined  for  the  whole  country  what  ought  to  be  sown,  and 
when  and  how  ;  they  settled  definitely  the  whole  round  of  work. 

Under  such  conditions,  it  was  not  long  before  the  spirit 
of  chivalry  got  the  upper  hand.  Its  triumph  was  decisive, 
complete,  and  incontestable  when  John  the  First,  named  the 
"  Great,"  came  to  the  throne.  He  was  one  of  the  sons  whom 
his  father,  the  King  of  Portugal,  had  made  the  Great  Master  of 
the  Order  of  the  Knights  of  Aviz.  Needless  to  say,  military 
orders  abounded  in  Portugal. 

Portugal,  then,  originated  from  a  patriarchal  rather  than  a 
feudal  form  of  society,  and  its  inhabitants  were  only  agri- 
cultural in  a  small  degree  ;  then  came  the  knights,  as  we 
have  just  seen.  It  remains  for  us  to  examine  the  influence  of 
chivalry  upon  commerce. 


392  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  THE 

I  said  that  the  shores  of  Portugal  naturally  formed  the  end 
of  the  commercial  line  of  traffic  of  the  north.  History  proves 
it,  as  we  shall  see. 

When  the  Crusades  were  at  their  height  in  the  Holy  Land, 
an  army  formed  in  the  north  took  ship  partly  at  Cologne,  partly 
at  Bremen.  It  coasted  along  Flanders,  England,  and  France, 
gathering  recruits  as  it  went.  When  it  reached  Oporto,  it 
counted  a  hundred  and  eighty  ships.  There  it  had  to  put  into 
port.  The  soldiers  thought  the  journey  along  by  the  French 
moors  and  the  shores  at  the  foot  of  the  Cantabrian  mountains, 
and  across  the  Bay  of  Biscay,  where  navigation  was  extremely 
difficult,  a  long  and  weary  one,  and  the  sailors  were  obliged  to 
rest  and  take  in  fresh  stores  of  food  in  Portugal.  As  a  stopping- 
place  for  vessels,  the  country  has  not  lost  its  importance  ; 
the  English  Navy  still  finds  it  convenient  for  the  same  purpose. 
When  the  army  of  Northern  Crusaders  landed  at  Oporto, 
they  were  met  by  the  most  earnest  entreaties  of  the  King  of 
Portugal  to  aid  him  in  conquering  Lisbon.  The  army  re- 
embarked  and  sailed  to  blockade  the  city  by  sea,  working 
in  conjunction  with  the  small  Portuguese  army.  After  holding 
out  for  five  months,  Lisbon  was  taken  by  assault  on  the  21st 
Octoberll47.  The  Crusaders  were  given  the  booty;  theythen  re- 
embarked,  and  set  out,  not  for  the  Holy  Land,  but  for  the  north. 

Two  other  fleets  from  the  north,  in  1189  and  1217,  likewise 
bound  on  Eastern  Crusades,  put  in  to  the  port  of  Lisbon,  which 
was  then  in  the  hands  of  Christians,  and  helped  the  kings 
of  Portugal  to  extend  their  conquests  farther  south.  They 
subsequently,  after  much  labour,  reached  the  Holy  Land, 
where  they  accomplished  very  little. 

When  the  kings  of  Portugal  were  masters  of  Lisbon,  and 
understood  how  important  their  country  was  from  the  point 
of  view  of  navigation,  they  began  to  turn  their  attention  towards 
seafaring  and  commerce.  Denis  the  Ploughman,  of  whom  I 
spoke  just  now,  sent  for  a  Genoese,  whom  he  put  at  the  head  of  a 
fleet,  and  who  perfected  the  Portuguese  in  the  art  of  navigation. 
So  that,  with  the  encouragement  of  its  princes,  who  stimulated 
agriculture  and  navigation  as  much  as  they  could,  Portugal, 
which  was  well  stocked  with  produce  for  an  external  market, 
soon  became  a  flourishing  country  renowned  for  its  trade. 
And  when  chivalry  definitely  prevailed  over  agriculture,  it 


EAST  AND  WEST  INDIES  393 

directed  commerce  towards  the  products  of  the  tropics,  and 
Portugal  became  the  port  for  the  east  in  the  place  of  Syria 
and  Palestine. 

The  sons  of  King  John  the  First,  "  the  Great,"  the  Master 
of  the  Order  of  Knighthood  of  Aviz,  who  had  ascended  the 
throne  of  Portugal,  one  day  came  to  their  father  declaring  that 
they  did  not  know  what  to  do  with  their  lives  ;  that  they  had  a 
burning  desire  to  be  armed  knights,  but  wished  to  win  that 
honour  by  some  extraordinary  feat  of  valour.  They  had 
thought  of  going  to  fight  the  Moors  across  the  strait  and  of 
getting  possession  of  Ceuta  by  some  brilliant  stroke  ;  they 
asked  the  king  to  allow  them  to  equip  a  fleet.  The  king  con- 
sented. When  Ceuta  was  taken  by  surprise,  the  father  made 
his  sons  knights  on  the  battlefield. 

The  leader  of  that  bold  enterprise  was  Henry  of  Portugal, 
the  last  of  the  four  sons  of  King  John,  who  all  took  part  in  the 
expedition.  He  was  then  twenty- one.  That  was  in  the  year 
1415.  Providence  had  made  him  a  man  of  genius,  and  genius 
is  a  quantity  Social  Science  does  not  neglect  in  dealing  with 
historical  events.  He  was  interested  in  everything  he  learned 
from  the  Moors  and  the  Jews  of  Morocco  about  the  countries 
of  the  east  with  which  they  still  had  dealings,  but  into  which 
no  Europeans  any  longer  penetrated. 

Again  we  find  chivalry  and  commerce  allied.  Henry  of 
Portugal  was  smitten  with  the  desire  of  directing  the  energies 
of  his  princely  circle  and  of  his  fellow-countrymen,  who  were 
absorbed  in  chivalry  and  commerce,  towards  those  attractive 
and  mysterious  countries.  And  so  completely  was  his  pro- 
gramme carried  out  that  when,  at  the  end  of  that  lengthy 
enterprise,  the  Portuguese  at  last  landed  in  India  and  were 
asked  what  they  had  come  to  seek  there,  they  replied,  like  true 
knights  and  genuine  merchants,  "  Christians  and  spices  !  " 

Henry  set  about  the  execution  of  his  great  project  in  the 
most  serious  manner.  He  demanded  no  help  from  laws  or 
public  and  official  institutions.  He  took  up  his  abode  all  alone 
in  sight  of  the  sea  at  the  point  of  Portugal  which  projected  the 
farthest  in  the  direction  in  which  he  wished  to  make  his  dis- 
coveries :  it  was  at  Sagres,  on  the  Cape  of  St.  Vincent,  the 
Promontorium  Sacrum  of  antiquity,  the  south-west  extremity 
of  Portugal.  There  he  remained  by  himself,  and  laboriously 


394  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  THE 

searched  among  the  facts  he  had  gathered  from  the  Arabs  and 
gleaned  from  the  science  of  that  time  for  information  which 
would  help  him  to  attain  his  object.  He  contributed  some- 
thing towards  the  invention  of  the  astrolabe  and  the  perfecting 
of  cartography.  He  formed  a  nautical  school  for  training 
those  whom  he  thought  promising.  Often  did  the  dawning 
day  find  him  poring  over  work  which  the  night  had  not 
interrupted. 

As  early  as  1418,  according  to  an  ancient  historian,  two  of 
the  young  men  of  his  house,  of  good  family  and  qualified  squires, 
— that  is  to  say,  aspirants  to  knighthood, — offered  to  accomplish 
some  daring  enterprise,  in  which  they  might,  they  said,  "  give 
proof  of  their  honourable  heart,  and  make  use  of  their  bodily 
energy,  for  their  time  was  ill  spent  if  it  were  passed  in  inactivity."1 
Henry  had  a  vessel  prepared  for  them  to  enable  them  to  fight 
against  the  Moors,  but  recommended  them  above  all  to  try  to 
go  beyond  the  lands  already  known  to  the  south  of  Morocco. 
That  was  the  first  step  in  the  circumnavigation  of  Africa  which 
he  was  meditating.  The  two  noblemen  discovered  Porto- 
Santo,  one  of  the  islands  near  Madeira.  They  gave  the  first 
impetus  in  this  direction.  In  the  series  of  expeditions  which 
followed,  Cape  Bojador,  which  seemed  to  be  the  end  of  the 
world  and  which  everyone  was  curiously  frightened  of  rounding, 
was  discovered,  also  Cape  Blanco  and  Cape  Verd.  At  that 
point  the  coast  of  Africa  begins  to  curve  in  again  towards  the 
east.  Henry  died  just  when  men's  hopes  were  rising. 

But  the  impetus  he  had  given  did  not  die  with  him.  Gener- 
ally speaking,  all  those  who  offered  themselves  for  this  new 
kind  of  adventure  were  gentlemen.  They  used  to  set  out 
with  three  or  four  vessels.  As  soon  as  they  had  made  any 
discovery  worth  noting,  they  came  back.  They  were  made 
knights,  and  became  merchants.  They  traded  in  the  natural 
riches  of  the  country  they  discovered  :  in  gold  dust  and  spices, 
and,  it  must  be  added,  black  slaves. 

While  these  discoveries  were  going  on,  King  John  n.,  a  man 
who  impersonated  the  spirit  of  the  country  at  that  time,  was 
ruling  Portugal.  On  the  one  hand,  like  a  true  knight,  he 
purposed  to  develop  the  race  of  horses  for  the  benefit  of  his 
military  forces.  He  forbade  his  subjects,  no  matter  of  what  rank 

1  Gomez  Eannez  de  Azurara,  Chronique  de  Ouin4e. 


EAST  AND  WEST  INDIES  395 

or  station  they  were,  to  ride  a  mule  ;  they  must  either  go  on 
foot  or  on  horseback.  And  the  blacksmiths  of  the  kingdom 
were  forbidden,  on  pain  of  death, — nothing  less, — to  shoe  amule! 
On  the  other  hand,  he  sent  out  simultaneously  two  expeditions 
to  discover  the  Indies,  one  of  which  was  to  go  round  by  South 
Africa,  the  other  by  the  ancient  route  through  the  Mediterranean. 

He  sent  Bartholomew  Diaz,  a  gentleman  of  his  house,  by 
the  former  route,  and  the  Knight  of  Covilham  by  the  latter. 

That  was  in  the  year  1486. 

Diaz  reached  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  and  conjectured  that 
from  there  the  African  coast  turned  north  again.  But  that 
was  all  he  could  do  :  his  crew  refused  to  go  farther. 

Covilham  went  to  Cairo.  In  the  company  of  Arabs,  whose 
language  he  knew,  he  crossed  the  isthmus  of  Suez,  followed  the 
shores  of  Arabia,  embarked  at  Aden,  and  landed  in  India  at 
Cananore.  He  had  told  no  one  of  his  mission.  He  was  the  first 
Portuguese  to  touch  on  that  mysterious  shore.  He  reached  it 
by  one  of  the  ancient  routes  which  the  conquests  of  the  Turks 
had  closed  to  the  people  of  the  west.  From  there  he  returned 
to  Africa,  went  right  down  the  east  coast,  still  accompanied 
by  Arabs.  With  a  little  luck  he  might  have  effected  a  junction 
with  Diaz  !  But,  after  all,  neither  of  them  clearly  proved  that 
it  was  possible  to  reach  India  by  rounding  Africa. 

Covilham  returned  to  Cairo  just  as  Diaz  returned  to  Portugal. 
There  at  any  rate  he  had  the  good  fortune  to  meet  two  new 
envoys  of  John  n.,  who  reported  the  result  of  his  voyage  to  the 
king.  He  then  went  to  visit  Ethiopia  or  Abyssinia,  another 
tropical  country  that  was  also  an  object  of  search.  But — and 
if  ever  there  was  a  significant  fact,  it  is  this — the  Abyssinians, 
though  they  treated  him  very  kindly,  prevented  him  from  ever 
returning  to  Europe  :  they  suspected  the  object  of  his  expedition. 

Thus,  on  the  one  side,  Diaz  had  not  found  the  famous  lands 
of  the  tropics,  and  on  the  other,  Covilham,  who  had  found  them 
all, — Arabia,  India,  Abyssinia, — did  not  return. 

But  about  the  same  time  a  Genoese  named  Christopher 
Columbus  came  to  settle  at  Lisbon,  and  married  there.  His 
mother-in-law,  the  widow  of  one  of  the  sailors  of  Henry  of 
Portugal's  school,  often  used  to  talk  to  him  of  what  she  re- 
membered of  the  first  discoveries  which  the  illustrious  prince  had 
directed,and  gave  him  the  nautical  records  made  by  her  husband. 


396  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  THE 

Columbus  had  sailed  over  all  the  European  seas  of  the  north  and 
of  the  south.  By  a  process  of  reasoning,  which  was  simple  enough 
in  itself  but  which  was  brilliant  in  comparison  with  the  ideas 
of  that  day,  he  came  to  the  conclusion  that  it  would  be  just  as 
easy,  or  better,  to  reach  the  Indies  by  rounding  the  globe  to  the 
west  rather  than  by  going  round  by  the  southern  hemisphere. 
In  that  very  year,  1486,  he  went  to  John  n.  and  expounded 
his  idea.  The  failure  of  his  appeal  is  only  too  well  known.  He 
then  went  to  the  King  of  Spain  and  pointed  out  what  a  good 
opportunity  it  would  be  of  getting  the  lead  of  Portugal  in  the 
discovery  of  the  Indies.  He  succeeded  no  better  than  he  did 
with  John  u.  But  some  time  after,  when  he  was  on  the  point 
of  laying  his  project  before  another  sovereign,  Queen  Isabella's 
interest  became  roused  ;  she  sent  for  him,  and  granted  him  two 
ships,  which  she  paid  for  out  of  her  own  royal  treasury.  A  third 
caravel  (a  Portuguese  vessel)  was  equipped  at  the  expense  of 
some  brothers  of  the  name  of  Pinzon,  who  wished  to  take  part  in 
the  expedition  in  person. 

Ten  days  after,  on  Friday  the  3rd  of  August  1492,  Christopher 
Col  ambus  set  out  from  Palos,  a  small  Spanish  port,  and  directed 
his  course  westwards  in  order  to  reach  the  Indies  from  the 
opposite  side. 

On  12th  October  he  touched  land  in  America,  believing  he 
had  found  the  other  side  of  the  Indies,  or  at  any  rate  Japan, 
which  was  then  called  Cipango. 

On  6th  March  1493  he  landed  at  the  port  of  Lisbon. 

On  hearing  of  his  adventure,  John  n.  expressed  a  desire  to 
see  him.  Columbus  appeared  in  answer  to  this  invitation, 
"  not  so  much,"  says  a  contemporary,  "  through  a  desire  to 
please  the  king,  as  to  chagrin  him  by  his  presence,"  because 
John  ii.  had  not  had  faith  in  him.  "  The  monarch,"  continues 
the  historian,  "  became  very  sad  when  he  saw  that  the  people 
of  the  country  whom  Christopher  Columbus  had  brought  back 
with  him  did  not  belong  to  the  black  race,  had  neither  woolly 
hair  nor  features  like  those  of  the  inhabitants  of  Guinea  (that 
name  was  then  applied  to  almost  the  whole  of  the  western  coast 
of  Africa  south  of  Guinea  properly  so  called),  but  resembling, 
on  the  contrary,  in  the  appearance,  colour,  and  arrangement 
of  their  hair,  the  descriptions  of  the  people  of  India,  whom  he 
was  spending  so  much  labour  in  seeking.  Now,  when  Columbus 


EAST  AND  WEST  INDIES  397 

gave  exaggerated  accounts  of  those  countries,  employing  a 
certain  freedom  of  speech,  and  accusing  and  reprimanding  the 
king  for  not  having  accepted  his  proposals,  several  gentlemen 
were  so  indignant  at  his  manner  of  speech,  and  so  much  moved 
to  hatred  because  of  the  liberty  of  his  words,  that  they  proposed 
to  the  king  to  kill  him  "  (Barros). 

Happily,  the  king  had  enough  conscience  to  refuse  to  commit 
such  an  abominable  crime,  and  eight  days  later,  on  the  15th  of 
March  1493,  Christopher  Columbus  landed  in  Spain  at  the 
harbour  of  Palos,  whence  he  had  set  out. 

John  n.  died  on  25th  October  1495  without  having  discovered 
the  Indies ;  but  the  information  he  had  received  from  Covilham 
through  the  intermediaries  I  mentioned  above,  proved  to  him 
that  there  were  also  negroes  on  the  coast  of  Africa  nearest  to 
India,  and  from  this  he  drew  no  further  conclusion  than  that  the 
point  to  be  ascertained  was  whether  it  were  really  possible  to 
round  black  Africa  by  sea. 

He  therefore  chose  another  gentleman,  Vasco  da  Gama,  and 
put  him  at  the  head  of  an  expedition  he  had  prepared  with  the 
greatest  care,  which  was  charged  to  go  north,  if  possible,  from 
the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  to  the  Indies. 

Vasco  da  Gama  set  out  after  the  king's  death,  on  10th  July 
1497. 

What  did  he  find  on  reaching  the  Mozambique  Channel  ? 
Arab  merchants  !  He  took  some  of  them  on  board  to  serve  as 
pilots.  He  soon  discovered  that  they  were  trying  to  mislead 
him,  and  to  bring  the  expedition  to  nothing.  He  watched 
them  closely  and  controlled  them  by  threats.  After  many 
adventures  and  many  dangers  he  landed  at  Calicut,  on  the 
coast  of  India,  on  Sunday,  20th  May  1498. 

So  the  Indies  were  discovered  eighty-three  years  after  the 
researches  begun  by  the  famous  Henry  of  Portugal ! 

The  first  people  that  Vasco  da  Gama  met  were  "  two  Moors, 
natives  of  Tunis,  in  Barbary,  who  had  come  to  Calicut  (by  the 
old  Arab  route  from  the  Mediterranean)  and  were  residents 
there.  One  of  them,  called  Bontaibo,  could  speak  Spanish  and 
knew  the  Portuguese  people  very  well,  to  credit  his  own  words, 
as  he  had  seen  them  at  Tunis  in  the  time  of  King  John  in  a  vessel 
called  the  Royne.  When  Vasco  da  Gama's  envoy,  who  went 
in  front,  was  about  to  enter  Bontaibo's  house,  the  latter,  recognis- 


398    DISCOVERY  OF  EAST  AND  WEST  INDIES 

ing  him  as  a  Portuguese,  said  to  him, '  Go  to  the  devil !  What 
has  brought  you  here  ?  ' 

We  will  stop  here  for  the  present.  We  have  seen  sufficiently 
what  the  Arabs  thought  of  the  discovery  of  a  route  by  which 
Europeans  could  reach  the  Indies  direct  without  having  to  pass 
through  the  Arabian  lands  that  lie  between  the  west  and  east. 

It  meant,  for  the  moment,  the  ruin  of  the  trade  of  the  Arabs 
in  the  Mediterranean.  It  is  needless  to  say  that  the  Arabs  were 
the  cause  of  many  of  the  difficulties  the  Portuguese  encountered 
in  India. 

We  shall  see  the  results  of  this,  the  most  memorable  of  all 
discoveries,  in  the  continuation  of  the  history  of  our  particularist 
races  in  the  west  of  Europe  under  the  influence  of  this  new  and 
widely  extended  horizon. 


CHAPTER   XXV 

THE  GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES  OF  MODERN 
TIMES:  SPAIN,  FRANCE 

A  LITTLE  way  back  we  saw  the  revival  of  royal  power 
at  the  dissolution  of  the  feudal  system.  We  now  have 
to  see  how  the  royal  power  developed  in  the  ancient  feudal 
countries  at  the  expense  of  the  particularist  form  of  society. 

Nothing  can  show  us  the  causes  and  effects  of  that  develop- 
ment better  than  the  continuation  of  the  history  of  Portugal 
for  a  few  years  from  the  point  at  which  we  left  it. 

It  is  easy  to  conceive  what  became  of  the  Portuguese  in  the 
promised  land  of  India  under  the  combined  influence  of  chivalry 
and  commerce.  A  handful  of  gallant  knights  and  adventurers, 
accustomed  to  maritime  expeditions,  rapidly  conquered  the 
most  accessible  parts  of  the  coast  of  the  enormous  peninsula, 
and  the  merchants  made  unheard-of  profits.  The  king  took 
for  himself  a  right  royal  share  of  everything,  and  was  thereby 
freed  from  the  necessity  of  turning  to  other  resources.  Agri- 
culture, which  had  never  flourished  except  under  the  patronage 
of  kings  and  had  already  declined  owing  to  their  predominating 
interest  in  chivalry  and  commerce,  now  sank  to  the  lowest 
ebb.  The  people,  who  were  content  with  little,  lived  on  the 
largesses  which  the  king,  the  knights,  and  the  merchants  lavished 
upon  them,  without  their  having  done  much  to  deserve  them. 
This  universal  facility  of  living  led  in  a  short  time  to  the 
complete  decadence  of  the  race  both  in  the  mother  country 
and  in  the  colonies. 

I  will  now  let  the  Portuguese  of  that  time  speak  for  them- 
selves. 

Here  is  the  opinion,  as  recorded  by  Luiz  Mendez  de  Vascon- 
cellos,  of  Affonzo  de  Souza,  one  of  the  illustrious  leaders  of  the 
conquest,  who  was  made  Captain  General  of  the  Indian  Ocean 

399 


400  GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES 

in  1534  :  "  After  all,"  he  said,  "  the  conquest  of  the  Indies  has 
not  given  us  fields  for  crops  or  meadows  for  the  pasturage  of 
our  flocks  and  herds  ;  it  has  not  given  us  labourers  to  cultivate 
our  land,  but,  on  the  contrary,  it  takes  from  us  those  who 
formerly  served  us  in  this  way  ;  for  some  are  carried  away  by 
greed,  and  others  by  the  love  of  warfare,  and  leave  us  destitute 
of  those  we  need.  Therefore  those  who  speculate  on  these 
things  say  that  there  is  now  much  more  land  uncultivated  than 
there  was  formerly,  and  that  land  is  now  neglected  which  was 
before  cultivated.  And  indeed,  if  that  were  not  true,  we  should 
see  fewer  forests  and  far  more  arable  land ;  for  if  everyone 
were  not  taken  up  with  speculations  in  India,  the  people  would 
undoubtedly  busy  themselves  with  what  was  before  their  eyes 
and  at  their  doors.  It  is  the  same  with  other  industries." 

"  Here,"  writes  one  of  the  shrewdest  and  most  learned  of 
cultivated  travellers  of  that  time  from  Lisbon,  where  he  resided, 
"  we  are  all  noblemen,  and  we  never  carry  anything  in  our 
hands  through  the  streets.  .  .  .  Do  you  imagine  that  the  mother 
of  a  family  would  deign  to  buy  her  fish  or  cook  her  vegetables 
herself  ?  .  .  .  She  uses  nothing  but  her  tongue  in  housekeep- 
ing. .  .  .  Everything  is  done  by  the  service  of  Moorish  or 
Ethiopian  slaves,  of  whom  there  are  so  many,  especially  in 
Lusitania  and  Lisbon,  that  they  seem  more  numerous  than 
the  free  subjects.  .  .  .  There  is  not  a  single  house  in  which 
there  is  not  at  least  one  Moorish  slave  as  a  servant.  .  .  .  Wealthy 
people  own  a  great  number  of  these  slaves  of  both  sexes."  l 

So  much  for  the  metropolis. 

As  for  the  colonies,  I  cannot  do  better  than  quote  the  short 
account  written  by  an  old  historian  of  that  time.  It  is  the  true 
expression  of  the  results  drawn  from  all  the  evidence  upon  the 
subject :  "  The  Romans,"  he  says,  "  at  the  time  of  their  greatest 
prosperity  did  not  have  a  much  larger  empire  than  the 
Portuguese.  .  .  .  With  so  much  to  their  advantage  they 
might  have  formed  a  solid  and  permanent  power,  but  the 
incompetence  of  some  of  the  commanders,  their  elation  at 
success,  the  abuse  of  wealth,  together  with  vice,  had  changed 
the  conquerors."  Here  the  author  gives  an  account  of  a 
series  of  disgraceful  misdeeds  committed  against  the  natives. 
"  Soon,"  he  continues,  "  the  Portuguese  had  no  more  human 

1  Letters  of  Nicolas  Klenardt. 


SPAIN  401 

feeling  left  for  one  another,  no  more  trust  in  each  other  than 
in  the  inhabitants  of  the  country.  Their  lives  were  a  strange 
medley  of  avarice,  debauchery,  cruelty,  and  piety.  Soon 
effeminacy  crept  into  their  houses  and  into  their  armies  ;  the 
tribute -money  which  more  than  a  hundred  and  fifty  Oriental 
princes  paid  soon  ceased  to  reach  the  King  of  Portugal :  all 
the  tribute-money,  the  money  from  the  customs,  the  taxes, 
were  not  enough  to  maintain  a  few  fortresses  and  pay  for  the 
equipment  of  the  necessary  ships,  so  active  was  brigandage." 

Only  eighty-two  years  after  the  discovery  of  the  Indies, 
Portugal  betrayed  her  decadence  by  allowing  herself  to  be 
annexed  to  Spain.  Philip  n.  took  possession  of  the  Portuguese 
kingdom,  by  taking  advantage  of  the  vacancy  of  the  throne, 
though  it  was  quite  contrary  to  the  feeling  of  the  nation  that 
he  should  lay  claim  to  the  succession.  Although  the  Portuguese 
recovered  their  independence  sixty  years  afterwards,  by  a 
conspiracy  that  has  remained  famous,  it  was  their  last  struggle. 
Under  the  Spanish  domination,  all  that  still  came  into  the 
treasury  from  the  colonies  was  diverted  from  the  support  of 
the  colonies  and  the  navy,  and  used  for  the  private  expenses  of 
Spain.  Everything  went  to  ruin  :  "  Matters  reached  such  a 
pitch,"  said  an  old  Portuguese  historian,  "  that  there  was  not 
a  single  frigate  in  the  kingdom  that  could  set  sail,  in  case  of 
emergency.  The  ocean  was  then  free  from  end  to  end  for 
every  pirate  who  wished  to  fall  upon  our  enfeebled  navy."  l 
The  most  formidable  of  the  "  pirates "  mentioned  by  the 
author  were  the  Dutch  and  the  English.  Philip  had  been 
tactless  enough  to  entangle  himself  in  wars  with  both  those 
nations,  who  had  just  been  building  their  navies  ;  they  profited 
by  the  war  to  take  possession  of  the  Portuguese  colonies  which 
had  become  Spanish. 

It  is  clear  from  this  outline  of  the  history  of  Portugal  how 
little  stability  a  race  has  whose  existence  ultimately  depends  on 
the  profession  of  war  and  on  commerce,  and  whose  enterprises, 
moreover,  depend  on  the  high-handed  action  of  a  central  power, 
which  at  first  tends  to  bring  everything  very  rapidly  to  a 
fictitious  height  of  development,  but  soon  leads  to  complete 
ruin  from  lack  of  resources.  The  counterpart  of  this  social  law 
is  seen  by  studying  the  English  rule  in  India.  The  strength  of 

1  Veloso  de  Lyra. 
26 


402     GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES 

the  English  Empire  does  not,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  lie  in  India, 
which  it  merely  governs,  and  with  which  it  trades,  but  in  the 
establishment  and  growth  of  the  race  on  the  agricultural 
estates  of  the  new  countries  (such  as  Australia)  which  it 
peoples  in  the  Saxon  way. 

The  history  of  Portugal  will  do  more  than  merely  serve  as 
a  contrast  to  that  of  England,  as  the  history  of  Venice  did  to 
that  of  the  Hanseatic  League  :  it  has  the  further  advantage  of 
preparing  us  to  understand  how  the  type  of  the  great  European 
monarchy  of  modern  times,  which  is  the  subject  before  us, 
was  first  formed  in  Spain. 

Our  object,  in  fact,  is  to  find  out  the  causes  of  the  develop- 
ment of  royal  power  at  the  end  of  the  Middle  Ages.  Spain 
was  actually  the  first  kingdom  to  show  this  development, 
and  the  original  formation  of  Spain  was  very  nearly  identical 
with  that  of  Portugal.  The  difference  was  due  to  the  fact 
that  Spain  had  acquired  a  large  territory  in  Europe  itself  : 
that  raised  it  to  the  rank  of  a  great  monarchy,  to  which  Portugal 
never  attained. 

Apart  from  the  western  oceanic  shore,  which  is  occupied 
by  Portugal,  the  Iberian  peninsula  is  composed  of  two 
parts  : 

1.  The  central  plateau,  which,  except  for  the  valley  of  the 
Ebro,  occupies  almost  the  whole  peninsula,  for  it  only  leaves 
room    round   its   margin  for    a   narrow   shore,   to   which    it 
descends  precipitously ; 

2.  The  valley  of  the  Ebro,  with  its  coast-line  on  the  Medi- 
terranean. 

The  former  of  these  two  parts  is  in  its  nature  entirely  inland 
— that  is  to  say,  it  is  practically  cut  off  from  the  sea.  It  is  essen- 
tially pastoral,  as  unwooded  plateaux  usually  are.  The  trees 
are  kept  down  by  the  race  of  sheep  which  was  brought  over 
from  Africa. 

The  second  part,  on  the  contrary,  is  maritime.  But  it 
really  has  no  commercial  ports  except  on  the  coast-line  between 
the  northern  boundary  of  the  valley  of  the  Ebro  and  the 
Pyrenees  in  the  country  of  Barcelona.  The  Ebro  reaches  the 
sea  by  an  estuary  bordered  by  marshes,  and  the  coast  south  of 
the  southern  border  of  the  valley  of  the  Ebro  has  very  few 
inlets  which  form  good  harbours. 


SPAIN  403 

Two  states  arose  in  these  two  naturally  distinct  regions : 
Castille  and  Aragon. 

The  original  population  of  the  two  states  was  made  up  of 
the  same  patriarchal  races  as  those  of  Portugal.  In  Castille, 
it  is  true  the  people  were  devoted  to  the  pastoral  art  rather 
than  to  agriculture,  while  in  the  other  part,  Aragon,  they  were 
given  up  to  maritime  commerce. 

Both  the  states  were  founded,  like  that  of  Portugal,  by 
the  knights,  in  their  crusades  against  the  Moors. 

Their  form  of  society,  then,  was  very  much  the  same  as 
that  of  Portugal. 

Castille  sprang  from  the  little  kingdom  of  Asturias,  to  which 
Henry  of  Burgundy,  that  Capetian  knight,  the  founder  of 
Portugal,  gave  his  help.  At  that  time  (1090)  it  extended  over 
the  Spanish  plateau  as  far  as  the  Tagus.  And  another  prince 
of  the  house  of  Burgundy,  Raymond,  carried  the  chivalrous 
enterprise  further  by  marrying  the  heiress  of  the  throne. 

Aragon  really  owed  its  pre-eminence  to  the  country  of 
Barcelona,  which  at  first  cut  it  off  from  the  sea.  The  country 
of  Barcelona  was  a  French  fief  like  Burgundy,  and  it  was  a 
count  of  Barcelona,  Raymond  Berenger,  who  married  the 
heiress  of  Aragon  in  1137,  and  so  united  his  country  to  the 
small  kingdom  of  his  wife  :  this  union  of  the  two  countries 
is  exactly  parallel  to  that  of  Asturias  and  Castille,  save  that 
there  was  an  interval  of  about  fifty  years  between  them. 

The  histories  of  Portugal,  Castille,  and  Aragon  are  all  on 
very  much  the  same  lines.  Their  histories  are  really  one  and 
the  same,  and  are  only  divided  into  separate  parts  by  the  fact 
that  the  Spanish  peninsula  is  naturally  divided  :  there  is  the 
western  and  oceanic  coast  (Portugal),  the  central  plateau 
(Castille),  and  the  valley  of  the  Ebro,  with  its  eastern  shore  on 
the  Mediterranean  (Aragon). 

But  to  continue  our  history. 

Castille,  which  was  shut  in  by  land  on  all  sides,  did  not 
have  the  same  opportunities  of  navigation  as  Portugal.  It  was 
some  time  before  it  won,  from  the  Moors  on  one  side  and  from 
the  Basques  on  the  other,  some  short  stretches  of  coast-line 
on  the  south  and  the  north,  which  were  to  some  extent  favour- 
able to  commercial  navigation. 

Aragon,  on  the  contrary,  had  a  long  line  of  coast,  but  it 


404     GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES 

only  faced  the  inland,  land-locked  sea,  the  Mediterranean, 
and  not,  like  that  of  Portugal,  the  open  sea,  the  vast  ocean. 
The  consequence  was  that  it  did  not  concern  itself  with  un- 
known lands,  but  with  the  old  countries  of  the  Mediterranean, 
with  which  it  traded  like  all  the  rest.  That  is  the  reason  why 
it  developed  in  a  different  way  from  Portugal :  instead  of  creat- 
ing distant  colonies,  it  formed  a  European  dominion.  It  won 
the  Balearic  Islands  from  the  Arabs  (1229),  Sicily  from  Charles 
of  Anjou,  the  brother  of  St.  Louis  and  pretender  to  the  lands 
of  the  Normans  (1282),  Sardinia  from  the  Pisans  (1323).  Later 
on  it  acquired  the  kingdom  of  Naples,  which  it  also  took 
from  the  house  of  Anjou  (1435). 

Then  the  day  came  which  saw  the  two  kingdoms  of  Castille 
and  Aragon  united  by  the  marriage  of  Isabel,  heiress  of  Castille, 
with  Ferdinand  the  Catholic,  King  of  Aragon  (1479).  That 
was  the  beginning  of  the  kingdom  of  Spain. 

The  power  that  held  all  the  states  from  the  Adriatic  to 
Portugal  was  not  one  to  be  despised.  But  it  soon  became 
still  more  redoutable. 

In  studying  the  development  of  Germany  up  to  the  revival 
of  royal  power  in  Europe,  we  observed  that  at  the  very  time 
when  Castille  and  Aragon  were  united,  Austria  had  annexed 
immense  estates,  also  chiefly  through  marriage.  It  must  be 
clearly  recognised  that  these  marriages  were  only  one  of  the 
expressions  of  the  movement  towards  concentration  which  was 
the  outcome  of  the  influence  of  the  monarchic  idea.  But  let  us 
make  a  summary  re  view  of  the  dominions  in  question :  Austria,  in 
the  first  place,  then  Bohemia,  Silesia,  Lusacia,  the  low  countries, 
Franche-Comte,  Milan,  and  the  Tyrol.  These  formed,  as  it 
were,  the  circumference  and  occupied  nearly  the  half  of 
Germany.  Moreover,  thanks  to  the  strength  they  gained  from 
these  annexed  countries,  the  sovereigns  of  Austria  succeeded 
in  keeping  in  their  family  the  imperial  crown,  the  power  of  the 
German  Holy  Roman  Empire. 

Now  Ferdinand  the  Catholic  and  Isabella  married  their 
daughter  and  heiress,  Joan  the  Mad,  to  the  heir  of  Austria, 
Philip  the  Fair ;  and  the  offspring  of  this  union,  the  Emperor 
Charles  v.,  ruled  over  the  whole  of  the  Spanish,  Austrian,  and 
imperial  dominions  which  I  have  just  mentioned. 
'  Possessed  of  such  power,  Charles  had  of  course  no  difficulty 


SPAIN  405 

in  making  himself  an  autocrat  in  Spain,  where  the  people  were 
of  the  patriarchal  type  and  given  up  to  chivalrous  adventures. 
He  was  not  so  successful  elsewhere,  but  he  triumphed  there. 

In  this  way  the  first  great  autocratic  monarchy  of  modern 
Europe  was  founded. 

It  was  quite  natural  that  this  form  of  the  society  of  ancient 
times  should  reappear  first  in  the  south,  because  the  Neo- 
German  invasion  had  not  reached  it  except  through  the  knights, 
and  they  never  founded  any  institution  capable  of  enduring.  It 
did  not  encounter  in  the  south  any  serious  resistance  from  the 
particularists.  These  simple  facts  explain  how  it  was  that  Spain 
suddenly  outstripped  France  in  the  development  of  this  intense 
form  of  monarchy,  although  royal  power  had  begun  to  revive 
in  France  first.  The  advance  of  royal  power  in  France  was 
checked  by  the  strong  influence  which  the  particularists  had 
obtained  in  the  country  and  which  continued  unshaken  in  spite 
of  the  dissolution  of  the  feudal  system. 

The  history  of  the  great  Spanish  monarchy  is  not  long. 
When  Charles  v.  abdicated  (1555),  he  gave  his  brother 
Ferdinand  the  hereditary  estates  of  Austria  and  the  imperial 
crown,  and  to  his  son  Philip,  who  was  Philip  n.,  Spain,  Italy, 
the  low  countries,  and  the  colonies  of  the  New  World  conquered 
by  Christopher  Columbus,  Balboa,  Cortez,  and  Pizarro. 

Philip  n.  seemed  to  display  in  their  most  exaggerated  forms 
the  intolerance  and  ambition  which  inevitably  grow  up  under  the 
system  of  great  monarchies,  and  he  thereby  succeeded  in  drain- 
ing Spain  of  men  and  money.  He  lost  the  greater  part  of  his 
provinces  in  the  low  country.  His  reign  is  always  considered 
as  the  type  of  despotism  in  modern  times  ;  it  had  all  its  passing 
brilliancy  and  haunting  horrors.  The  court  of  Spain  had  a 
theatrical  setting :  vanity,  arts,  and  letters  alone  prospered ; 
all  the  rest  was  hurried  to  destruction. 

Spain  declined  still  more  rapidly  under  Philip  in.  and  went  to 
pieces  altogether  under  Philip  iv.  These  two  were  the  direct 
successors  of  Philip  n.,  to  whose  faults  they  added  incapacity, 
another  natural  consequence  of  this  system  of  sovereignty, 
And  since  then,  after  nearly  two  and  a  half  centuries  have  gone 
by,  the  mighty  movement  which  sways  the  world  has  done 
almost  nothing  but  hasten,  or  further  emphasise,  the  decadence 
of  that  unhappy  country. 


406     GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES 

It  must  be  remembered  that  when  Spain  was  at  the  height  of 
her  apparent  greatness  she  possessed  a  colonial  empire  in  the 
finest  parts  of  America,  from  California  and  Mexico  to  Peru 
and  Chili,  which  was  quite  as  extensive  and  far  richer  than  her 
European  lands.1  She  managed  it  as  badly  as  Portugal  had 
managed  the  lands  she  had  discovered,  and  for  the  same  reasons, 
since  the  fundamental  constitution  of  those  two  parts  of  the 
peninsula  was  the  same.  We  have  already  seen  that  though, 
owing  to  her  power  in  Europe,  she  had  been  able  to  lay  hands 
upon  the  small  state  of  Portugal,  she  had  no  idea  what  to  do 
with  the  Portuguese  colonies,  which  were  already  in  a  state  of 
decadence,  and  only  succeeded  in  provoking  the  English  and  the 
Dutch  by  her  wars  to  plunder  them  and  begin  their  conquest. 

So  much  for  the  history  of  the  first  great  European  monarchy. 
It  will  throw  some  light  on  France,  the  second  great  monarchy 
in  chronological  order,  which  developed  on  very  much  the  same 
lines.  Everyone  knows  how  much  France  was  influenced  by 
Spain  at  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century. 

In  the  history  of  France,  however,  we  shall  come  across  a 
peculiar  phenomenon  as  regards  a  point  which  I  have  already 
mentioned  :  monarchy  had  to  struggle  against  the  particularist 
traditions  of  the  Franks.  Here  we  shall  again  resume  the  direct 
history  of  the  particularist  form  of  society  after  the  digression 
we  have  been  obliged  to  make  in  order  to  understand  all  the 
social  forces  which  bear  upon  our  subject. 

We  found  that  royal  power  in  France,  in  order  to  regain  its 
vigour,  was  obliged  to  rely  upon  the  class  of  urban  manufacturers, 
who  were  but  newly  sprung  from  the  prosperous  country-folk. 
It  was  with  the  help  of  these  people  who  had  come  from  the 
country,  and  had  enlisted  in  the  communal  militias  or  in  the 
bands  of  mercenaries,  that  Philip  Augustus  began  to  make  for 
himself  a  powerful  dominion  which,  apart  from  what  he  already 
possessed,  spread  right  over  the  north  of  France  from  Poitou 
to  Artois.  In  that  way  the  great  territory  was  formed  which 
furnished  monarchy  with  the  most  efficacious  and  most  positive 
means  of  action. 

But  monarchy  would  not  have  done  much  if  it  had  merely 
succeeded,  through  its  conquests,  to  the  rights  of  the  great 
feudatories,  who  were  strangely  shackled,  as  we  saw,  by  the 
1  See  Foncin's  Atlas  general,  map  33. 


FRANCE  407 

emancipation  of  the  vassals  and  the  enfranchisement  of  the 
serfs,  or  if  it  had  depended  on  the  goodwill  of  the  communes, 
in  fact,  we  shall  presently  find  it  wrestling  with  this  twofold 
difficulty. 

The  object  of  the  king's  greatest  anxiety  was  money :  he 
had  to  have  money  to  pay  his  soldiers,  since  he  wished  to  do 
without  the  feudal  army  and  to  defeat  it;  he  had  to  have  money 
to  pay  his  civil  functionaries,  since  he  did  not  wish  to  grant 
fiefs  in  payment  for  public  offices.  In  all  the  lands  belonging 
to  his  dominions  he  had  two  sets  of  men  to  represent  him,  as  we 
have  already  seen,  one  superior  in  authority  to  the  other,  the 
bailiffs  or  seneschals,  and  the  provosts,  who,  like  the  Mero- 
vingian counts,  were  charged  with  the  administration  of  justice 
and  finance  and  with  the  superintendence  of  the  armed  forces. 
Now,  it  was  forbidden  that  officers  should  be  appointed  to  posts 
in  the  places  where  they  lived,  or  that  they  should  acquire  any 
land  there,  or  that  they  or  any  of  their  children  should  be 
united  in  marriage  to  anyone  in  the  place,  or,  finally,  that  they 
should  live  there  for  more  than  three  years. 

The  kings,  therefore,  could  not  get  on  without  money.  They 
were  soon  obliged  to  complain  openly  of  their  poverty  and  beg 
for  subsidies,  which  they  were  not  yet  able  to  extort  by  force. 

When  events  occurred  which  were  likely  to  rouse  the 
patriotic  feelings  of  the  people,  they  used  the  opportunity  to 
call  together  the  great  landowners,  both  lay  and  ecclesiastical, 
— that  is  to  say,  the  feudatories,  the  clergy,  and  the  nobility, — 
and  ask  their  pecuniary  help  towards  some  action  which  was 
of  interest  to  all. 

That  was  the  beginning  of  the  States  -  general  (fitats 
Generaux).  The  communes  were  also  summoned  to  these 
meetings,  for  two  reasons  :  the  first  was  that  the  part  of  the 
land  they  occupied  was  under  their  jurisdiction,  they  possessed 
"  land,"  they  were  lords  in  their  own  way  ;  the  second,  which 
was  still  more  decisive,  was  that  they  had  the  means  of  furnish- 
ing subsidies,  they  were  the  masters  of  industry,  and  industry 
was  the  most  abundant  source  of  wealth. 

But  it  must  be  observed  that  the  agricultural  class  did  not 
figure  in  the  general  assembly  of  the  owners  of  land.  The 
people  belonging  to  the  communes  were  entirely  from  the 
towns  ;  they  represented  only  the  industrial  class. 


408     GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES 

As  the  result  of  their  enfranchisement,  the  people  living  in 
the  country  literally  owned  the  land,  worked  it,  held  it  in 
perpetuity,  and  could  transmit  it  at  will,  but  they  had  to  pay 
an  annual  rent  as  the  price  of  their  possession.  These  ground- 
rents  were  the  great  source  of  income  of  the  feudal  lords,  the 
knights,  who  were  thus  dispossessed  in  reality,  but  nominally 
remained  the  proprietors.  They  had  not  put  up  their  goods 
for  sale,  they  had  merely  put  them  out  on  hire  :  they  retained 
their  title  of  landowners.  And  that  title  was  necessary  to 
them  :  (1)  because  there  was  "  no  lord  without  land,"  according 
to  the  old  feudal  adage — that  is  to  say,  that  if  it  had  been  known 
that  they  had  sold  their  land,  all  their  manorial  rights — such  as 
the  rights  of  war,  of  knighthood,  of  jurisdiction,  of  precedence, 
etc. — would  have  dropped  ;  they  would  have  found  them- 
selves in  the  position  of  ordinary  men  ;  (2)  because  they  lived 
on  that  annual  and  permanent  rent  like  regular  annuitants, 
certain  of  an  inexhaustible  and  periodical  source  of  income. 

The  States-general,  then,  was  composed  of  the  clergy  and 
the  nobility,  or  knights,  of  the  towns  or  communes  ;  the 
agricultural  class,  the  workers  of  the  soil,  its  true  possessors, 
remained  completely  unrepresented. 

The  taxes  were  levied  upon  land  and  industries. 
The  tax  or  subsidy  that  was  levied  by  consent  upon  the 
land  was  necessarily  paid  by  those  who  held  it,  worked  it,  and 
made  profit  out  of  it — by  the  agricultural  class.  And  that 
class  had  to  pay  a  subsidy  to  the  king  over  and  above  the  fixed 
and  immutable  rental  that  it  was  bound  to  pay  to  the  lord 
according  to  the  contract  it  made  upon  its  enfranchisement. 
So  that  the  tax  which  was  granted  to  the  king  by  the  lords  was 
paid  by  the  tenants.  In  this  way  the  one  party  made  the 
grants,  which  the  other  had  to  pay.  This  is  the  first  point  with 
regard  to  which  the  reader  must  not  fall  into  the  ordinary 
error  of  supposing  that  the  institution  of  the  States -general 
offered  securities  to  the  nation. 

It  must  not,  however,  be  supposed  that  the  lords,  clergy,  or 
laymen  voted  for  the  tax  demanded  by  the  king  with  a  light 
heart,  and  that  nothing  but  feelings  of  humanity  and  conscience 
made  them  think  twice  about  it.  If  the  subsidy  had  burdened 
the  land  with  a  larger  tax  than  it  could  reasonably  pay,  the 
rent — that  is  to  say,  the  annual  payment  of  rent  to  the  lord — 


FRANCE  409 

would  have  been  compromised,  the  lords  would  have  run  the 
risk  of  themselves  being  badly  paid  by  their  tenants.  They 
recognised  that  as  the  stopping-place,  the  extreme  limit  of  the 
tax  which  they  could  allow  to  be  levied  without  obviously 
injuring  themselves.  But,  furthermore,  the  tax  always  tended 
to  injure  them  a  little,  imperceptibly,  because  it  impoverished 
their  tenants  in  a  certain  measure,  and  because  the  lords  had 
a  thousand  means  at  their  disposal  of  getting  money  out  of 
rich  tenants,  but  not  out  of  poor  ones.  There  were,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  a  number  of  favours  and  small  secondary  exemptions, 
which  the  tenants  could  obtain  from  the  lords  for  a  sum  of 
money,  and  which  the  latter  were  glad  to  sell  to  suitable  persons. 

The  tax  or  subsidy  which  was  levied  upon  manufacture 
was  a  matter  of  personal  concern  to  the  representatives  of  the 
towns.  It  fell  directly  upon  them — at  any  rate  they  felt  it 
far  more  than  their  fellow- workers  the  artisans  of  the  towns ; 
for  they  were  the  most  important  among  them,  and  therefore 
the  most  heavily  taxed.  It  was  to  the  interest  of  many  of  the 
members  of  the  assembly  that  the  taxes  should  fall  on  the 
towns  by  preference,  because,  owing  to  their  industries,  they 
had  an  incomparably  larger  income  than  the  mass  of  the 
coun  try-people . 

The  peculiarly  disagreeable  situation  occupied  by  the 
representatives  of  the  towns  at  the  States-general  had  the 
effect  of  making  them  rather  dislike  the  assemblies,  where  the 
disposal  of  money  which  they  had  to  furnish  themselves 
was  discussed,  while  the  lords,  both  ecclesiastics  and  laymen, 
granted  money  which  was  furnished  by  their  tenants  rather 
than  at  their  own  expense.  It  is,  therefore,  easy  to  understand 
the  very  different  aspect  the  States-general  wore  in  the  eyes  of 
the  lords  and  in  those  of  the  representatives  of  the  towns. 

This  explains  the  attitude  which  was  soon  adopted  by  the 
towns,  when  fresh  demands  for  taxes  were  constantly  made  by 
the  kings,  whose  bad  administration  was  to  blame.  They  were 
thoroughly  annoyed  at  the  squandering  of  money,  and  offered 
to  direct  and  manage  the  States-general,  and  put  the  affairs  of 
the  country  into  good  order  themselves. 

Etienne  Marcel,  the  Provost  of  the  Merchants  of  Paris,  was 
the  first  leader  of  that  famous  movement. 

But  before  we  examine  what  it  led  to,  let  us  turn  our 


4io     GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES 

attention  to  the  flagrant  error  often  made  by  historians,  who 
represent  the  peasant,  the  cultivator,  as  actually  liable  to  be 
taxed  and  to  contribute  forced  labour  at  will  under  the  feudal 
system,  but  as  having  been  liberated  by  the  kings.  It  is  just 
the  contrary !  The  peasant  had  freed  himself  from  his  obligations 
to  the  lord  by  his  own  act — that  is,  by  perfecting  himself  in 
agriculture  by  working  under  his  lord  when  he  was  developing 
the  land,  and  by  applying  that  skill  to  his  work  on  his  own  land, 
and  thereby  growing  rich — and  he  succeeded  in  reducing  his 
dues  to  a  fixed  and  immutable  rate.  When  a  king  appeared 
on  the  scenes  the  peasant  began  to  be  oppressed  by  taxes,  he 
was  taxed  more  and  more,  and  to  excess,  without  being  able  to 
do  anything,  without  even  being  summoned  to  the  council  of 
the  nation,  where  he  might  have  defended  his  interests  and 
his  rights. 

It  was  a  very  serious  matter  that  the  land  was  no  longer  in 
the  hands  of  anyone  who  employed  labour  :  those  lords  who 
were  knights  employed  no  labour  on  the  land,  nor  was  their 
place  or  office  taken  by  the  royal  treasury.  There  was  no 
longer  any  superior  farming  class.  What  a  contrast  with  the 
state  of  things  under  the  Franks  ! 

But,  further,  from  the  time  of  the  predominance  of  royal 
power,  the  land  suffered  more  from  war.  The  central  power 
has  been  much  praised  for  having,  in  the  course  of  its  develop- 
ment (and  I  must  add,  in  order  to  give  itself  room  to  develop), 
suppressed  the  so-called  private  wars.  These,  however,  were 
powerfully  checked  by  more  means  than  one  in  the  Middle 
Ages.  But  it  is  forgotten  how  much  the  general  wars,  which 
were  far  more  burdensome  and  destructive,  increased,  owing 
to  the  revival  of  the  central  power.  True  feudalism,  the  agri- 
cultural feudalism  of  the  time  of  the  Merovingians  and  Carlo  - 
vingians,  had  put  a  stop  to  those  great  uncontrolled  political 
wars,  by  refusing  to  take  part  in  them.  When  royal  power 
was  re-established,  the  wars  returned  with  such  frequency  and 
violence,  and  lasted  for  such  long  periods,  that  the  reader  wearies 
of  perusing  the  accounts  of  them,  and  the  historian  is  distressed 
at  having  to  describe  them.  Even  the  knights,  fond  of  war  as 
they  were,  preferred  to  go  far  away  to  fight  as  a  rule,  and 
employed  only  volunteers,  and  generally  appeared  in  the  field 
without  any  other  troops. 


FRANCE  411 

The  revival  of  royal  power,  then,  did  not  improve  the  lot  of 
the  country-people.  When  these  points  are  taken  into  con- 
sideration, there  is  no  need  to  be  surprised  that  as  time  went  on 
the  central  power  had  to  face  the  very  serious  question  of  what 
measures  should  be  adopted  for  the  revival  of  agriculture. 
The  constant  recurrence  of  the  question  in  the  order  of  the 
day  is  sufficient  evidence  of  the  complete  inadequacy  and 
inefficiency  of  the  means  invented  by  the  royal  administration 
for  giving  a  fictitious  life  to  this  important  branch  of  national 
activity.  The  two  men  who  are  best  known  as  having  made 
persistent  and  untiring  efforts  in  this  direction  are  Sully  and 
Colbert.  There  are  also  occasional  indications  in  history  of 
what  a  constant  anxiety  there  was  to  get  the  country  districts 
to  take  part  in,  or  to  appear  to  take  part  in,  the  representation 
of  the  country  at  the  States-general.  But  no  steps  were  taken 
beyond  these  :  first  of  all,  certain  secondary  towns,  or  even 
large  boroughs,  were  summoned  to  the  States-general,  but  they 
too  were  aggregations  of  people  in  which  the  industrial  popula- 
tion was  usually  in  the  ascendant  and  not  the  agricultural. 
Secondly,  the  rural  districts  were  summoned,  but  the  precaution 
was  taken  of  mixing  their  delegates  with  those  of  the  towns  : 
the  delegates  of  these  districts  had  to  join  the  delegates  of  the 
local  headquarters,  which  was  the  town  ;  in  a  joint  meeting 
they  nominated  fresh  delegates  in  the  second  degree,  who 
betook  themselves  to  the  principal  town  of  the  neighbourhood, 
where  fresh  delegates  in  the  third  degree  were  elected,  and 
joined  the  direct  representatives  of  the  large  town  in  the  work 
of  drawing  up  the  "  book  of  recommendations  "  and  definitely 
appointing  joint  representatives  for  the  States-general.  This 
shows  how  the  rural  element  was  filtered  through  the  amalgam 
of  town  elements. 

To  return,  then,  to  the  towns,  which  alone  took  a  real  part  in 
the  States-general,  besides  the  lords,  both  ecclesiastics  and 
laymen.  It  was  they  who,  in  the  bungling  administration  of 
the  king,  attempted  to  preserve  themselves — that  is  to  say, 
to  preserve  industries,  which  were  as  much  menaced  by  taxation 
as  was  agriculture.  They  were  authorised,  in  so  far  as  they 
themselves  voted  the  taxes,  to  lay  down  the  conditions  under 
which  they  should  be  imposed,  and  it  was  by  that  means  that 
they  tried  to  organise  the  State  and  the  Government  after 


412     GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES 

their  own  fashion.  They  brought  the  ideas  and  capacities  of 
business  men,  accustomed  to  calculate  and  to  order  their  affairs, 
to  bear  on  the  subject. 

But  they  conceived  the  kingdom  as  a  great  commune,  as 
was  quite  natural,  and  the  idea  of  the  independence  of  in- 
dividuals was  completely  absent"  from  their  minds.  They  laid 
down  principles  for  the  public  officials,  and  failed  to  appreciate 
the  fact  that  state  service  deprives  men  of  personal  interests 
which  are  the  source  of  some  of  the  best  qualities  in  private 
life.  In  private  life  men  are  left  free  to  provide  spontaneously 
for  their  own  interests  in  combination  with  their  fellows. 

Whatever  direction  may  have  been  taken  by  the  reforms 
they  attempted,  the  towns  lacked  all  means  of  legal  sanction 
when  it  came  to  the  question  of  getting  them  enforced  :  so 
they  were  nothing  more  than  vain  projects.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  they  had  no  power  to  impose  them  except  when  they  were 
assembled  by  the  king,  who  had  made  them  dependent  upon 
himself  as  their  centre.  To  add  to  this,  they  had  no  idea  of 
any  concerted  public  action,  and  had  no  bond  of  that  kind  with 
one  another.  We  have  already  mentioned  that  that  was  the 
cause  of  their  inferiority  to  the  Hanseatic  towns — that  is  to  say, 
to  the  leagued  and  associated  towns — and  that  this  was  due  to 
the  fact  that  royal  power  had  revived  sooner  in  France  than  in 
Germany,  and  had  immediately  shackled  the  budding  communal 
movement  and  turned  it  to  its  own  profit  by  putting  itself  at 
the  head  of  it. 

The  towns  attempted  to  escape  from  this  situation.  At  the 
States-general  of  1356,  which  was  summoned  for  the  purpose 
of  paying  John  the  Good's  ransom,  they  attempted  to  league 
themselves  together  with  the  object  of  supporting,  by  this 
coalition  of  their  forces,  some  remonstrances  they  had  drawn 
up,  which  were  more  opportune  than  ever  in  the  face  of  the 
palpable  blunders  the  kings  had  committed.  They  decided  to 
have  Etienne  Marcel,  Provost  of  the  Merchants  of  Paris,  at 
their  head — that  is  to  say,  the  leading  municipal  magistrate  of 
the  leading  town  of  France.  Etienne  Marcel  sent  round  in- 
structions to  diverse  towns,  in  his  name  and  in  the  name  of  the 
town  of  Paris,  to  organise  a  general  armed  rising. 

The  king  simply  went  over  to  the  side  of  the  lords  on  finding 
that  he  was  threatened  by  the  opposition  of  the  communal 


FRANCE  413 

militias,  which  he  had  at  first  used  to  make  himself  independent 
of  the  lords.  The  lords  were  delighted  to  revenge  themselves 
in  some  way  on  the  communes  and  to  return  to  the  king's 
favour  in  some  degree. 

The  leading  Parisian  merchants  were  exterminated. 

At  the  same  time  the  rising  of  the  peasants  (la  Jacquerie) 
took  place  in  the  country  districts,  and  it  was  a  strong  proof 
of  the  extent  to  which  the  agricultural  class  had  been  excluded 
from  every  kind  of  organisation,  that  that  wild  and  thoughtless 
band  was  led  at  random,  and  without  knowing  where,  by  the 
lowest  dregs  of  the  people.  It  can  in  no  way  be  compared 
to  the  methodical  rising  of  the  towns.  The  contrast  is  enough 
to  show  the  difference  of  the  condition  of  these  two  groups 
of  the  population,  and  how  their  positions  had  been  reversed. 

But  it  is  still  more  sad  that  when,  eighty  years  after  Etienne 
Marcel's  attempt,  a  new  revolt  broke  out  in  Paris,  the  massacres 
and  disorders  of  the  times  proved  that  the  great  merchants 
had  disappeared.  The  movement  was  headed  by  the  most 
insignificant  artisans  and  by  the  University  ;  the  men  of  action 
were  Caboche,  with  his  butchers,  flayers,  and  butcher  boys  ; 
the  spokesmen  were  the  professors  of  the  University.  They  suc- 
ceeded no  better  than  Marcel,  and  it  became  clear  to  the  towns 
that  they  could  not  arrive  at  anything  through  the  States - 
general  with  only  these  artisans  as  their  representatives, 
who,  though  they  were  intelligent  men  with  good  intentions, 
had  been  accidentally  diverted  from  their  business  to  give 
advice  which  it  was  out  of  their  power  to  support  or  put  into 
effect. 

The  conclusion  the  towns  came  to  was  that  they  must 
resign  themselves  and  yield  to  the  demands  for  subsidies  which 
they  had  no  power  to  refuse.  They  too  had  to  submit  to 
arbitrary  taxation,  which  became  heavier  owing  to  the  miser- 
able situations  in  which  the  king  found  himself,  thanks  to  his 
neglect  or  his  own  bad  management.  From  that  time  industry 
was  as  hardly  treated  as  agriculture.  The  kings  used  the  funds 
thus  provided  by  the  taxes  in  two  ways.  They  gave  the  lords 
pensions,  and  in  that  way  enrolled  them  as  military  officers 
in  their  pay  :  that  was  the  end  of  chivalry,  properly  so  called, 
and  the  beginning  of  the  establishment  of  a  military  nobility  at 
court.  They  further  organised  a  body  of  officials,  also  in  their 


414    GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES 

pay,  who  were  purposely  chosen  from  among  the  townspeople, 
and  through  them  the  kings  extended  their  power  as  much  as 
they  could  to  every  branch  of  civil  life.  That  was  the  origin  of 
the  bodies  of  royal  functionaries. 

It  is  easy  to  see  the  inevitable  result  of  these  two  institu- 
tions. The  lords,  who  found  that  the  military  commissions 
granted  by  the  king,  and  revocable  at  his  pleasure,  gave  them 
good  openings  and  were  a  source  of  increase  to  their  income, 
turned  their  attention  towards  the  court  and  court  intrigues. 
The  burgesses  directed  their  energies  towards  securing  public 
offices  on  rinding  that  they  promised  a  more  certain  and  more 
profitable  career  than  industry  or  agriculture. 

And  it  is  clear,  from  a  comparison  of  the  two  paths  followed 
by  these  two  classes,  that  it  is  to  the  second  class,  the  burgess 
officials,  and  not  to  the  first,  the  nobles  of  the  court,  that  the 
power  of  conducting  consistently  the  organisation,  regulation, 
and  government  of  public  affairs  must  belong. 

This  is  what  actually  happened.  At  the  States-general 
which  was  subsequently  summoned,  instead  of  the  merchant 
burgesses  as  formerly,  it  was  the  official  burgesses  of  the  king 
who  took  precedence  of  everyone  else  in  the  assembly.  It  was 
they  whom  the  towns  henceforth  sent  by  preference  as  their 
representatives,  as  being  more  skilled  in  public  affairs  than  their 
original  representatives  could  possibly  have  been,  who  were 
merely  chosen  from  the  industrial  class.  It  also  seemed  probable 
that,  in  the  ordinary  pursuance  of  their  duties,  they  would  be 
better  able  to  carry  out,  after  the  dissolution  of  the  States- 
general,  the  reforms  which  they  had  persuaded  the  assembly 
to  accept. 

But  the  only  reforms  which  such  a  set  of  officials  could 
propose  consisted  in  the  perfecting  of  the  royal  administra- 
tion. It  was  the  same  for  them  as  for  all  officials  :  that  was  the 
only  direction  in  which  they  saw  hope  of  positive  and  serious 
improvement.  So  they  were  constantly  inventing  new  ways 
of  improving  the  central  administration,  and  the  royal  power 
thereby  tended  to  become  better  regulated,  more  methodical, 
more  honest,  but  also  more  rigid,  more  all-pervading,  more 
complicated.  Such  was  the  origin  of  that  wonderful  adminis- 
trative machine  which  our  fathers  constructed  with  such  care 
and  skill.  As  for  liberty,  real  initiative,  the  independence  of 


FRANCE  415 

individuals,  they  did  not  come  into  the  reckoning.  The  object 
was  to  secure  good  order  by  means  of  the  administration  : 
that  was  the  sole  idea,  the  only  ideal. 

So  these  meetings  of  the  States-general,  these  national 
assemblies  so  much  extolled  as  guaranties  of  liberty,  were 
really  in  the  hands  of  the  royal  burgess  officials. 

France,  then,  has  passed  from  the  hands  of  the  farming  land- 
owners of  feudal  times  to  the  legists,  the  children  of  the  towns. 

The  legists  retained  their  urban  character,  because  the 
duties  they  performed  for  the  king  fixed  them  in  the  towns. 

But  it  was  necessary  besides  to  give  a  proof  of  intellectual 
culture  in  canvassing  for  these  government  appointments  ; 
it  was  necessary  to  have  university  degrees,  or  at  any  rate  some 
certificate  of  intellectual  attainments.  So  it  became  obligatory 
to  go  to  the  towns  to  study.  This  accounts  for  the  multitude 
of  students  who  kept  pouring  into  the  University  of  Paris 
or  other  universities  through  which  it  was  advantageous  for 
a  man  to  pass  in  order  that  he  might  have  more  claims  to  the 
posts,  the  "  appointments,"  than  his  competitors.  That  was 
the  connection  between  the  legists  and  the  men  of  letters.  It 
was  also  one  of  the  great  causes  of  the  influx  of  the  country- 
people  to  the  towns. 

The  rapidity  with  which  the  number  of  government  appoint- 
ments multiplied  is  shown  in  the  continuation  of  the  history 
of  the  royal  administration.  Apart  from  the  number  of  new 
posts  created  for  new  objects,  the  original  ones  were  divided 
and  subdivided  to  infinity.  For  instance,  at  first  there  was  the 
bailiff,  who  played  the  part  formerly  taken  by  the  Merovingian 
count :  he  was  head  of  the  police,  of  the  courts  of  law,  and  of 
the  army,  and  was  tax-gatherer  for  the  king.  But  soon  a  special 
official  was  created  for  military  service  and  another  to  look 
after  the  taxes.  The  bailiff,  whose  duties  were  in  that  way 
limited  to  the  management  of  the  police  and  the  courts  of 
law,  subsequently  had  a  lieutenant-general  and  then  private 
lieutenants  under  him.  Nor  did  "  progress  "  stop  there. 

It  is  a  very  strange  thing  to  see  how  even  the  most  intelli- 
gent and  liberal  historians  of  that  time  made  mistakes  and 
were  never  tired  of  admiring  the  progress  of  this  central  admin- 
istrative organisation,  completely  forgetting  that  the  State  is 
not  the  country,  and  that  the  strength  of  a  race  does  not  lie 


416     GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES 

in  the  unnatural  multiplication  of  laws.  With  these  writers  the 
history  of  France  ceases  to  be  a  history  of  France,  and  becomes 
the  history  of  the  royal  power  and  its  clever  organisation. 

But  suddenly  the  vices  of  the  system  manifested  them- 
selves. It  is  easy  to  see  that,  as  the  reforms  of  the  States- 
general  were  only  fine  administrative  schemes,  they  had  no 
other  guarantee  for  their  execution  than  the  king's  good  pleasure, 
for  he  was  the  master  of  the  machine  of  administration  and 
complete  master  of  his  staff  of  officials.  So  we  look  on  at 
the  singular  spectacle  of  the  affairs  of  France  rising  and  falling 
according  to  the  good  qualities  or  faults  of  the  king.  When  the 
king  is  good  enough  to  apply  the  schemes  of  the  legists,  good 
order  is  outwardly  introduced  into  all  branches,  which  brings 
certain  great  results,  puts  an  end  to  shameful  and  ruinous 
squandering,  and  leads  the  country  gently  forward.  But  soon 
after  the  king  enters  upon  some  useless  and  expensive  war, 
decides  to  create,  if  you  please,  offices  to  be  sold  in  order  to 
make  money,  without  considering  the  value  of  the  new  officials, 
and  the  finely  finished  machine  of  government  cracks  and 
gets  out  of  order,  now  at  this  point,  now  at  that. 

France  thus  reverted  to  the  ancient  system  which  the 
feudal  institution  of  the  Franks  had  ousted. 

In  the  next  chapter  we  shall  explain  how  the  rural*  domains 
did  not  recover  from  the  fatal  condition  into  which  they  had 
fallen  under  the  management  of  the  agricultural  class,  which 
had  been  neglected  by  the  lords,  knights,  or  court  nobles, 
and  had  been  dominated,  like  everything  else,  by  the  ideas  of 
the  legists  and  the  fickle  will  of  an  absolute  monarch. 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

THE  GKEAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES  OF  MODERN 
TIMES :  FRANCE— Continued 

IN  regaining  their  power  at  the  natural  decline  of  feudalism, 
the  kings  did  not  attempt  to  assume  the  management 
of  agriculture,  which  had  been  abandoned  to  the  peasants  at  the 
time  of  their  enfranchisement  and  when  chivalry  was  at  its 
height.  They  were  even  less  desirous  of  seeing  the  rise  of  a  new 
aristocratic  agricultural  class  drawn,  strange  as  it  might  seem, 
from  the  pick  of  the  peasants.  Their  organisation  of  society 
simply  consisted  in  the  creation  of  a  public  treasury,  into  which  it 
was  their  ambition  to  pour  all  the  money  that  they  could  possibly 
get  by  taxing  farming,  industry,  and  commerce,  with  the  object 
of  providing  money :  (1)  to  pay  the  non-feudal  army  attached 
to  the  king — that  was  the  main  point ;  (2)  to  pay  the  nobles 
(who  were  by  then  deprived  of  all  their  resources)  annuities, 
on  condition  that  they  should  serve  the  king  as  leaders  of 
regiments  of  soldiers  and  as  officials  at  the  court ;  (3)  to  pay 
innumerable  civil  functionaries  chosen  from  among  the  burgesses, 
whose  duty  it  was  to  levy  taxes  and  administer  the  king's  justice 
everywhere  ;  (4)  to  encourage  agriculture,  industry,  and  com- 
merce when  they  should  become  palpably  weakened  by  the 
pressure  of  taxation. 

A  system  of  government  consisting  of  a  general  treasury,  into 
which  it  is  attempted  to  pour  as  much  money  as  can  be  drained 
from  the  sources  of  the  country's  wealth  and  by  the  aid  of  which 
the  central  power  attempts  to  assume  to  itself  all  the  possible 
offices  in  the  country,  is  the  completest  and  most  extravagant 
communal  system  which  can  be  substituted  for  the  productive 
system  of  independent  domains. 

The  opposition  between  the  two  systems  is  obvious  at  first 
sight. 

27 


418     GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES 

The  return  to  the  social  organisation  of  the  people  of  olden 
times  was  so  marked  that  it  began  to  be  thought  that  the  thou- 
sand years,  roughly  speaking,  of  the  Frankish  feudal  system 
was,  as  it  were,  an  interregnum  of  darkness  and  trouble  in  the 
middle  of  the  system  of  government  by  kings.  People  began  to 
disinter,  sometimes  with  genuine  wonder,  sometimes  with  pre- 
determined admiration,  those  institutions  of  Roman  decadence 
that  could  be  best  adapted  to  the  new  government,  which  was 
reconstituted  in  the  Romano-barbarian  style.  So  France, 
which  had  been  strongly  founded  by  the  particularist  family 
on  the  system  of  the  particularist  estate,  returned  to  the  condi- 
tion of  the  communal  peoples  of  the  south  and  of  antiquity. 

We  must  now  see  whether  this  return  to  the  past  was  to  her 
advantage. 

This  can  be  determined  by  one  observation,  which  can  be 
made  with  great  precision. 

On  the  one  hand,  we  have  noted  that  at  the  end  of  the  Middle 
Ages  industry  and  commerce  were  very  much  more  advanced 
in  the  south  than  in  the  north.  The  advance  was  due  to  the 
traditions  of  the  industrial  and  liberal  arts  which  had  nourished 
to  such  an  extent  among  the  Greeks  and  Romans,  and  which 
still  survived  in  the  Byzantine  Empire  and  in  those  towns  in 
Italy  which  had  remained  in  touch  with  it.  Commerce  owed  its 
prosperity  to  the  Mediterranean,  then  the  sole  route  to  the  East. 
Venice,  and  the  other  Italian  republics,  her  rivals,  Portugal  and 
Spain,  all  illustrated  the  fact  that  the  ascendency  in  industry 
and  commerce  still  belonged  to  the  south.  But  it  was  bound 
to  slip  from  them  in  the  fourteenth  century,  for  the  reasons 
we  have  already  noted. 

On  the  other  hand,  we  know  that  under  the  influence  of  the 
Franks  as  owners  of  estates  and  feudal  lords,  agriculture  developed 
in  the  north  with  an  energy  and  force  which  completely  trans- 
figured that  part  of  the  country  and  gave  it  the  predominance 
in  Europe  and  a  social  and  political  superiority  over  even  the 
rich  countries  of  the  south.  And  France  was  foremost  among 
the  nations  of  the  north  in  this  supremacy  which  was  founded 
upon  high  farming. 

Now  what  resulted  from  her  reversion  to  the  antique  con- 
stitution of  the  peoples  of  the  south  ? 

1.  France  lost  her  superiority  in  high  farming,  a  superiority 


FRANCE  419 

which  was  entirely  due  to  the  particularist  organisation,  and 
that  superiority  passed  to  England,  where  the  particularist 
system  was  preserved,  as  we  shall  see.  France,  however,  had  a 
tremendous  start  over  England,  apart  from  the  fact  that  her 
land  is  both  more  extensive  and  more  productive. 

2.  France  did  not  inherit  the  industrial  and  commercial 
prosperity  of  the  people  of  the  south  :  and  yet,  was  she  not  placed 
in  a  very  favourable  position  ?  She  was  their  nearest  neighbour, 
and  her  harbours  opened  on  the  three  seas  :  the  Mediterranean, 
the  Ocean,  and  the  North  Sea.  But  when  she  readopted  the 
constitution  of  the  southern  peoples,  she  followed  them  in  their 
decadence,  and  the  industrial  and  commercial  inheritance  of 
the  old  communal  countries  passed  to  England,  which  had 
remained  particularist. 

I  repeat :  when  France  reverted  to  the  antique  social 
organisation,  she  lost  her  superiority  over  the  northern  countries 
in  high  farming,  and  was  unable  to  take  the  place  of  the  people 
of  the  south  as  regarded  industry  and  commerce  when  they 
decayed. 

We  shall  establish  this  important  fact  in  detail,  by  con- 
sidering in  turn,  under  the  revived  monarchical  system,  the 
three  groups  of  the  population  which  were  occupied  in  agri- 
culture, manufacture,  and  commerce,  and  were  the  outcome  of 
the  Frankish  and  feudal  organisation. 

One  point  has  already  been  made  :  agriculture,  industry, 
and  commerce  had  reached  the  position  of  being  able  to 
make  a  bargain  with  the  manorial  power  in  accordance  with 
which  they  paid  a  fixed  rental,  which  must  necessarily  have 
become  less  and  less  burdensome  owing  to  the  progress  in  the 
art  of  production  and  the  diminution  of  the  value  of  money. 
But  they  were  charged  by  the  monarchic  Government  to  pay, 
over  and  above  the  rental,  a  tax  which  was  bound  to  increase 
according  as  the  king's  demands  for  money  increased,  which 
they  did  without  limit,  since  the  royal  power  gradually  tended  to 
manage  everything.  And  agriculture,  industry,  and  commerce 
actually  received  back  from  that  tax  only  what  remained  when 
the  armed  bands  had  been  paid,  the  lords  had  received  their 
salaries  for  military  commands  or  appointments  at  court,  and 
the  innumerable  government  officials  and  the  king's  administra- 
tors of  justice  and  finance  had  been  paid.  Even  then  what 


420  GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES 

remained  was  not  devoted  to  agriculture,  industry,  and 
commerce,  except  when  they  were  on  the  verge  of  ruin,  in 
order  to  raise  them  artificially  to  the  standard  attained  by 
progressive  foreigners,  and  to  make  them  able  to  continue 
paying  the  tax,  which  was,  besides,  always  on  the  increase. 

It  is  easy  to  understand  that  such  a  system  was  not  likely 
to  produce  a  natural  prosperity,  and  a  high  standard  in 
agriculture,  industry,  and  commerce,  or  to  give  them  a  good 
impetus  forward. 

In  order  to  get  an  idea  of  the  system,  not  any  longer  from 
its  causes,  but  from  its  effects,  we  must  examine  its  results, 
such  as  they  were. 

In  fact,  we  must  describe  the  state  of  agriculture,  industry, 
and  commerce  at  the  time  of  the  growth  of  the  power  of  royalty. 

1.  Agriculture. 

We  can  appreciate  the  effect  of  the  royal  system  of  govern- 
ment under  which  agriculture  was  carried  on,  by  going  back  in 
imagination  to  one  of  those  periods  which  were  most  favourable 
to  it — that  is  to  say,  to  the  period  after  the  restorative  reign  of 
Henry  iv.,  after  one  of  those  occasions  upon  which  monarchy 
made  all  possible  efforts  to  make  reparation  for  the  evils  it 
had  created  in  the  country  districts.  We  shall  continue  our 
observations  all  through  the  most  prosperous  period  of 
monarchy — that  is  to  say,  under  the  Bourbons.  The  result  will 
be  instructive  if  it  does  not  turn  to  the  advantage  of  monarchy. 

There  is  no  need  to  dwell  on  the  pains  Sully  took  in  using 
means  provided  by  the  State  "  for  ploughing  and  pasturing, 
which  are,"  he  said,  "  the  two  breasts  by  which  France  is 
nourished,  the  true  mines  and  treasures  of  Peru."  Nor  need  I 
dwell  on  Olivier  de  Serres,  the  propagator  of  artificial  pastures, 
the  author  of  the  Theatre  of  Agriculture  and  the  Husbandry  of 
the  Fields,  whose  efforts  towards  agronomic  progress  were 
supported  by  Henry  iv.,  who  ordered  him  to  start  the  culture 
of  mulberries  in  the  royal  domains.  In  short,  everyone  recog- 
nises that  the  reign  of  Henry  iv.  saw  a  return  of  prosperity,  one 
of  the  causes  of  which  was  the  attention  given  to  the  resus- 
citation of  agriculture  by  his  administration.  Now  "  the  death 
of  the  king  and  Sully's  retirement  soon  after,  exposed  all  that 
they  had  founded  to  destruction.  Mary  de  Medici,  with  her 
petty  passions,  her  narrow  prejudices,  her  circle  of  Italian 


FRANCE  421 

upstarts  or  councillors  of  Henry  iv.,  who  could  be  useful 
instruments,  but  not  leading  men  in  the  Government,  was 
incapable  of  grasping  the  policy  of  her  husband,  and  still  more 
incapable  of  carrying  it  on.  All  the  principles  which  had  been 
pursued  in  the  preceding  reign  were  abandoned  in  domestic  as 
well  as  foreign  policy.  The  nobles  raised  their  heads  again, 
and  coined  money  stamped  with  emblems  of  revolt  and  re- 
presentations of  civil  war,  of  which  the  people  paid  the  cost : 
the  millions  which  Sully  had  stored  up  in  the  cellars  of  the 
Bastille  disappeared  like  smoke."  1 

That  gives  a  full  idea  of  the  result  of  this  system  of  govern- 
ment. A  king  of  a  different  character  has  merely  to  come  to 
the  throne,  and  the  conditions  of  national  prosperity  are 
entirely  upset.  Like  king,  like  country !  In  no  matter  what 
history  of  France,  and  whatever  may  be  the  opinions  and 
prejudices  of  the  author,  it  is  most  curious  to  see  to  what  extent 
the  aspect  of  the  country  in  each  reign  corresponds  to  the 
personal  character  of  each  sovereign. 

Henry  iv.'s  reign  rejoiced  in  a  great  reputation.  That 
reputation  was  due  to  the  administrative  talents  of  the  prince, 
but  it  would  be  an  error  to  suppose  that  Henry  iv.  in  any  way 
changed  the  direction  of  the  onward  march  of  the  monarchic 
system  :  on  the  contrary,  he  fell  in  with  it,  and  gave  it  a  great 
impetus  forwards. 

So,  without  any  cause  beyond  the  change  of  the  ruling 
sovereign,  France  relapsed  during  four  years  of  regency  into  a 
state  of  political  ,anarchy  and  financial  disorder  which  necessi- 
tated the  convocation  of  the  States-general,  when  Louis  xm. 
came  of  age,  in  order  to  find  some  remedy. 

The  assembly  of  1614  is  most  striking  evidence  of  the 
destitution  of  agriculture.  It  demanded  with  one  voice  the 
reduction  by  one  quarter  of  the  dues  which  had  become  over- 
whelming for  the  people.  Savaron  was  chosen  by  the  assembly 
of  the  commons  to  bear  their  grievances  and  make  complaint 
to  the  king,  and  he  spoke  as  follows  : 

"What  would  you  have  said,  Sir,  if  you  had  seen  men 
grazing  on  grass  after  the  manner  of  cattle  in  our  land  of 
Guyenne  and  Auvergne  ?  Would  that  such  strange  things, 
such  unheard-of  misery  in  your  State,  might  create  in  your 

1  Pigeonneau,  Histoire  du  Commerce  de  la  France,  vol.  ii.  p.  351. 


422     GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES 

royal  heart  a  desire,  worthy  of  Your  Majesty,  to  render  help  in 
such  pressing  need  !  And  moreover,  all  that  I  have  said  is  so 
true,  that  may  my  property  and  my  appointments  be  con- 
fiscated by  Your  Majesty,  if  I  am  convicted  of  lying."  l 

Whatever  may  be  the  facts  upon  which  this  statement  of 
Savaron's  was  based,  there  can  be  no  doubt  about  the  de- 
plorable condition  of  agricultural  affairs  four  years  after  the 
rule  of  Henry  iv.  and  Sully. 

It  is  true  that  during  the  new  "  restorative  "  reign  of  Louis 
xin.  some  progress  was  made  ;  but  it  is  likewise  true  that 
under  Louis  xiv.  the  wars  caused  by  the  king's  vanity  and 
ambition  caused  a  relapse  into  misery,  owing  to  the  taxes 
concerning  which  the  States  general  was  no  longer  summoned  ; 
and  the  picture  of  the  peasant  drawn  by  La  Bruyere,  and 
corroborated  by  the  courageous  statements  of  Fenelon,  form  a 
pendant,  less  than  a  century  afterwards,  to  Savaron's  "  grazer 
of  grass." 

If  we  transport  ourselves  to  the  end  of  the  following  reign, 
we  shall  find  things  in  the  state  described  by  Arthur  Young  in 
his  Travels  in  France.  The  book  is  an  indivisible  whole,  and 
ought  to  be  reproduced  here  in  its  entirety  :  I  shall  content 
myself  by  quoting  a  few  lines  :  "  The  quantity  of  waste  land 
we  have  come  across  (in  Angoumois)  is  astonishing,"  says  the 
traveller  :  "it  seems  characteristic  of  all  the  land  through 
which  we  have  travelled.  Most  of  the  moors  belonged  to  the 
Prince  of  Soubise,  who  refused  to  sell  any  part  of  them.  So 
whenever  you  come  across  a  great  lord,  even  when  he  owns 
millions,  you  may  be  sure  that  his  lands  are  lying  fallow.  That 
prince  and  the  Duke  of  Bouillon  are  the  two  greatest  landed 
proprietors  in  all  France,  and  so  far,  the  only  signs  of  their 
greatness  I  have  seen  are  fallow  fields,  moors,  deserts,  heaths, 
and  bracken." 

Apart  from  royal  management,  the  lamentable  results  of 
which  we  have  just  seen,  it  appears  that  the  burgesses,  who  drew 
a  regular  and  increasing  income  from  the  public  appointments 
they  held  from  the  king,  acted  as  employers  with  regard  to  agri- 
culture. It  was  they,  indeed,  who  gradually  bought  the  lands 

1  Narrative  of  Florimond  Rapine.  Cf.  Augustin  Thierry,  Histoire  du 
Tiers  fitat,  p.  139,  and  Pigeonneau,  Histoire  du  Commerce  de  la  France,  vol.  ii. 
p.  351. 


FRANCE  423 

of  the  lords,  both  large  and  small ;  for  at  the  time  of  which 
Arthur  Young  speaks  there  were  only  a  few  lords  who  were 
in  a  position  to  refuse  to  sell  at  all.  A  robed  nobility — that  is 
to  say,  civil  functionaries,  administrators  of  justice  and  finance, 
in  a  word,  the  legists — had  taken  the  place  of  the  fighting  nobility 
on  a  number  of  estates.  As  early  as  1257  the  non-nobles 
had  been  authorised  by  the  king  to  acquire  the  lands  of  the 
nobles  on  payment  of  a  tax,  which  was  to  be  discharged  once 
for  all  independently  of  the  price  of  purchase.  But  such 
acquisition  did  not  raise  a  man  to  the  peerage.  Later  on, 
the  civil  functionaries  were  exempted  from  the  tax  I  have  just 
mentioned,  an  exemption  which  practically  amounted  to  desig- 
nating them  as  the  purchasers  of  the  lands  which  the  nobles 
abandoned,  since,  owing  to  this  privilege,  they  could  buy  them 
more  cheaply  than  other  people.  In  the  end  they  were  also 
granted  the  right  of  being  raised  to  the  peerage  on  paying  large 
sums  of  money,  and  from  that  time  officials  of  that  rank  were 
far  more  tempted  than  before  to  buy  the  lands  belonging  to 
nobles,  since  they  could  then  mix  in  the  society  of  such  nobles 
as  still  remained  in  the  country. 

That  was  the  process  by  which  the  officials  of  the  burgess 
class  took  the  place  of  the  old  class  of  lords,  not  only  in  the 
exercise  of  power,  but  also  in  the  ownership  of  the  feudal 
domains. 

But  the  new  landowners  were  only  poor  employers,  as 
regards  agriculture  :  they  were  utterly  incapable  of  bringing 
back  the  independence  of  the  domain,  or  at  any  rate  its  pre- 
ponderant influence  in  the  State. 

(1)  They  were  town-folk  :  they  had  been  brought  up  in  the 
towns ;  in  many  cases  even  they  had  been  born  there  ;  all  their 
official  appointments  had  been  in  the  towns.     Many  of  them, 
after  having  purchased  rural  property,  manors,  continued  to 
live  in  the  towns,  at  any  rate  for  a  good  part  of  the  year. 

(2)  They  naturally  favoured  centralisation :  had  they  felt 
the  need  of  any  social  transformation  which  would  benefit 
agriculture,  they  could  not  have  conceived  of  it  as  coming  from 
anywhere  but  from  the  authority  of  the  State. 

(3)  They  were  not  men  of  enterprise,  of  private  initiative  : 
they  had  made  their  fortunes  through  their  public  offices, 
which  had  been  entirely  organised  and  constituted  without 


424     GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES 

their  help  ;  under  the  influence  of  the  hierarchic  system  they 
had  learnt  only  cautious  and  wary  methods  of  procedure,  and 
were  but  little  accustomed  to  bold  personal  speculations  open 
to  risks  :  they  were  conservative  in  their  methods  of  agriculture 
as  in  everything  else. 

(4)  They  were  not  naturally  independent :  their  ambition 
to  rise  in  the  social  scale  made  them  the  born  imitators  of  the 
nobility,  so  that  after  having  invested  their  wealth  in  lands, 
as  far  as  they  could,  they  tended  to  spend  their  incomes  in  a 
"  lordly  "  manner — that  is  to  say,  in  the  bad  ways  employed  by 
the  fighting  nobility  in  the  time  of  their  decadence. 

We  now  know  the  history  of  agriculture  in  France  from  the 
time  when  it  was  taken  in  hand  by  the  particularist  agricultural 
immigrants,  when  they  became  large  employers  of  labour  in  the 
country,  up  to  the  time  when  it  was  abandoned  to  the  peasants, 
who  were  at  first  left  to  themselves,  then  oppressed  by  taxation, 
insufficiently  helped  by  the  State,  and  finally  poorly  employed 
by  men  from  the  towns,  civil  functionaries. 

Our  next  step  is  to  see  what  became  of  industry  under 
the  same  system  of  government,  that  of  the  great  monarchy, 
in  France. 

2.   Industry. 

We  know  how,  when  agriculture  flourished  under  the 
management  of  the  feudal  lords  of  early  times,  the  peasants  who 
had  grown  rich  had  bought  their  liberty,  and  had  severally 
taken  up  their  quarters  on  their  own  holdings,whilst  the  artisans, 
since  manufacture  had  also  benefited  by  this  prosperity,  had 
detached  themselves  from  the  land  as  their  source  of  livelihood, 
and  had  placed  their  workshops  nearer  the  markets,  in  favour- 
able positions.  In  each  of  these  centres  the  body  of  artisans 
attempted,  as  if  they  were  on  a  communal  estate,  to  establish 
by  a  common  understanding  the  best  industrial  conditions. 
That  was  the  origin  of  the  towns  in  France  in  the  Middle  Ages. 
But  their  political  development  and  free  expansion  were  shackled 
by  the  kings,  who  made  them  into  centres  of  government  where 
royal  officials  held  high  rank  and  formed  an  aristocracy.  In 
foreign  lands,  where  royal  power  had  less  influence  or  was 
less  developed,  the  industrial  element  in  the  towns  assumed 
considerable  power,  and  even  dominated  the  surrounding  rural 
districts.  That  was  especially  the  case  in  Italy  and  Flanders. 


FRANCE  425 

In  Italy  the  towns  made  a  great  advance  upon  the  other 
public  institutions,  because  they  had  been  founded  a  long  time 
back  under  the  Roman  government ;  because  they  had  not 
been  abolished  by  the  rural  system  of  feudalism,  which  had  not 
seriously  made  its  way  into  the  south ;  because  the  industrial 
arts  were  cherished  by  the  towns,  thanks  to  their  close  relations 
with  the  Byzantine  Empire  and  the  east ;  and  finally,  because 
the  Eastern  Empire,  the  sole  monarchic  power  which  would 
have  been  capable  of  controlling  them  at  that  time,  was  involved 
in  an  active  war,  and  was  even  victoriously  repulsed  by  the  pope. 
That  is  why  the  towns  in  Italy  had  a  free  field  before  them. 

As  for  the  towns  of  Flanders,  the  causes  of  whose  prosperity 
we  shall  discover  later  on,  they  remained  safe  from  the  inter- 
ference of  the  French  kings,  owing  to  their  precocious  develop- 
ment and  their  distance  away.  They  were  masters  of  the  sur- 
rounding country,  and  ruled  by  their  industrial  power.  When 
the  kings,  beginning  with  Philip  the  Fair,  positively  claimed 
the  right  of  interfering  with  the  towns,  they  did  not  win  any 
advantages  over  them. 

It  is  therefore  certain  that  in  the  south  as  well  as  in  the  north, 
in  the  countries  having  the  communal  form  of  society  as  well 
as  in  those  with  the  particularist  form,  the  fullest  development 
of  industry  took  place  in  those  countries  where  the  towns  had 
not  come  under  royal  power. 

The  following  sketch,  taken  from  Pigeonneau's  Histoire  du 
Commerce  de  la  France,  will  give  some  idea  of  it :  "  Not  only  art 
and  literature,  but  also  industry,  commerce,  public  and  private 
wealth,  elegant  comforts,  luxurious  refinements,  made  Italy 
at  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century  an  object  of  admiration, 
envy,  and  covetousness  to  the  people  of  the  North.  The  manu- 
facture of  velvet,  of  cloth  of  gold,  of  cloth  of  silver,  of  silk,  had 
finally  spread  from  Venice  and  Genoa  all  over  the  peninsula 
to  Milan,  Florence,  Lucca,  Naples,  Vicenza,  Padua,  the  pottery 
of  Bologna,  Castel-Durante,  and  Urbino,  the  gold  and  silver 
work,  the  jewellery  of  Venice,  of  Florence  and  Rome,  were 
unrivalled  in  the  East  and  in  Europe.  The  Venetian  lace, 
although  the  famous  Venetian  point  was  not  then  invented, 
eclipsed  the  renown  of  the  laces  of  Flanders  and  Spain.  The 
glass-makers  of  Murano,  the  Berovieri,  the  Ballarini,  regular 
dynasties  of  artists  and  inventors,  already  surpassed  those  of 


426     GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES 

Germany ;  at  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century  they 
discovered  the  secret  of  the  so-called  Venetian  mirrors  and 
the  secret  of  the  production  of  false  pearls  blown  out  with  an 
enameller's  lamp.  Venice  was  the  metropolis  of  the  art  of 
printing  :  from  1472  to  1500  she  saw  the  foundation  of  a 
hundred  and  fifty-five  typographic  workshops. 

"When  the  noble  youths,  the  comrades  of  Charles  viii.,  who 
had  but  just  escaped  from  Louis  XL'S  rod,  were  suddenly 
transported  to  that  enchanted  world,  when  their  victorious 
march  had  brought  them  from  the  Alps  to  the  Sicilian  Sea 
through  the  splendours  of  Milan,  Florence,  and  Rome,  a  positive 
madness  of  imitation  came  upon  them  after  the  dazzled  astonish- 
ment of  the  first  days,  an  intoxication  which  recalls  that  of 
the  Romans  after  their  campaigns  in  Greece  and  Asia  Minor. 
What  struck  their  imagination  was  not  so  much  the  brilliancy 
of  art  and  literature  as  the  magnificence  of  the  dress,  the 
strange  fashions,  the  sumptuous  repasts  and  gorgeous  furniture. 
Charles  vm.'s  companions  admired  the  doublets  of  velvet  and 
satin,  the  embroidered  gloves,  the  brocaded  dresses  and  the 
slippers  of  the  Venetian  ladies,  the  mosaic  floors  and  the  sculp- 
tured ceilings,  almost  as  much  as  the  statues  and  pictures  of 
the  great  masters.  When  the  king  returns  to  France,  he  will 
take  back  with  him  a  medley  of  architects,  painters,  statuaries, 
savants,  an  army  of  perfumers,  of  jewellers,  of  embroiderers, 
of  ladies'  tailors,  of  carpenters,  gardeners,  organ-makers,  and 
workers  in  alabaster,  whom  he  will  establish  at  the  castle  of 
Amboise."  *•  Here  again  it  was  the  same  with  industry  as 
with  agriculture,  the  king  was  obliged  to  push  it  forward  by 
his  own  personal  act  after  he  had  deprived  it  of  its  own  initiative. 
"  At  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century  industry  in  France 
was  in  no  way  prepared  for  this  sudden  revolution.  A  few 
silk  factories  at  Lyons,  at  Tours,  at  Nimes,  some  glassworks  in 
Argonne,  in  Agenois,  and  in  Burgundy,  admirable  enamels  at 
Limoges,  some  fine  sculptured  marble  at  Paris,  Rouen,  and 
Tours — that  was  all  that  France  could  produce  to  compete 
with  the  products  of  Italy.  She  had  no  manufacturers  compar- 
able to  those  of  Florence,  Venice,  Rome,  or  Milan.  So  the 
court  and  the  nobility  were  obliged  at  first  to  seek  in  foreign 
parts  what  France  could  not  give  them."  2 

1  Vol.  ii.  pp.  22-24.  2  lUd.  pp.  59,  60. 


FRANCE  427 

All  that  Charles  vm.,  thanks  to  his  expedition,  had  un- 
expectedly introduced  into  the  order  of  the  day,  Francis  i., 
with  his  artistic  tastes  and  love  of  magnificence  and  ceremony, 
made  a  regular  part  of  the  programme. 

Francis  the  First's  reign  was  marked  by  the  favour  he 
showed  to  the  luxurious  arts,  to  building,  furnishing,  and  the 
dress  of  the  Renaissance  style,  borrowed,  that  is,  though  with 
a  few  changes,  from  Greek  and  Roman  antiquity,  from  the 
south,  from  Italy.  The  means  he  adopted  for  stimulating 
French  industry  were  new  and  have  not  since  grown  old,  as  it 
appears  :  he  used  the  system  of  protection,  the  more  or  less 
complete  exclusion  of  those  foreign  goods  whose  manufacture 
he  wished  to  encourage  in  France.  Under  feudalism,  it  was 
forbidden  to  export  goods  unless  it  was  decided  that  there 
was  a  surplus  of  produce  on  the  lands  of  the  domain  ;  transport 
dues  were  levied,  but  exclusion  of  goods  was  unknown. 

Another  measure  adopted  by  the  king  was  to  create  "  pur- 
veyors to  the  king  "  by  royal  warrant,  outside  the  corporations. 
These  privileged  manufacturers  could  practise  their  craft  and 
open  a  shop  wherever  the  king  stayed  ;  they  were  not  subject 
to  the  trade  regulations,  and  had  only  to  answer  for  their 
commercial  dealings  before  the  king  or  his  private  repre- 
sentatives. It  was  indeed  a  case  of  the  king  directing  commerce 
at  his  pleasure. 

But  the  king  stirred  up  more  formidable  competitions  than 
the  Italians  in  his  endeavour  to  revive  industry  :  he  kept  on 
increasing  and  selling  public  appointments,  which  more  and 
more  withdrew  from  industry  the  pick  of  its  workers.  "  From 
the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century,"  says  Pigeonneau, 
"  venality  spread  to  all  the  financial  offices  and  soon  to  the 
appointments  in  the  courts -of -law ;  they  were  multiplied 
without  limit,  divided  into  two,  three,  or  four  in  order  that 
there  might  be  more  to  sell :  that  was  the  resource  which  was 
always  ready  in  urgent  cases,  which  paved  the  way  for  the 
paper  currency  of  the  ancien  regime.  It  was  remarked 
some  time  after  by  a  courtier  :  '  How  is  it  that  when  His 
Majesty  creates  an  office,  God  always  simultaneously  creates 
a  fool  to  buy  it  ?  '  Were  the  sons  of  merchants  and  artisans, 
who  found  the  means  to  buy  not  only  the  wherewithal  to  satisfy 
their  self-love,  and  the  more  serious  privileges  attached  to  the 


428  GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES 

performance  of  public  duties,  but  also  the  real  power,  which 
had  almost  entirely  slipped  out  of  the  hands  of  the  born  nobility, 
were  they  as  foolish  as  the  gentleman  implied  ?  From  the 
sixteenth  century  the  government  and  administration  of  the 
kingdom  was  carried  on  by  burgesses,  under  the  name  of  state 
councillors,  king's  secretaries,  members  of  supreme  courts, 
judges  of  the  inferior  courts,  long-robe  bailiffs,  treasurers 
of  France,  judges  of  the  elections  (i.e.  of  certain  areas  into 
which  France  was  divided  in  ancient  times),  and  public  and 
private  collectors  ;  it  was  they  who  were  observed,  as  Claud 
de  Seissel  put  it  (1450-1520),  buying  up  the  inheritances 
and  manors  of  the  barons  and  noblemen  who  were  reduced  to 
such  poverty  that  they  could  not  keep  up  the  appearances 
of  nobility.  Unhappily,  this  epoch  also  saw  the  rise  of  two 
scourges  which  the  Revolution  was  powerless  to  stamp  out  in 
France  :  the  plague  of  '  officialism,'  and  disdain  for  industrial 
and  commercial  careers. 

"  We  shall  never  again  see,  as  in  the  Middle  Ages,  any  of 
those  dynasties  of  merchants,  the  Arrodes,  the  Popins,  and  the 
Piz  d'Oe  of  Paris,  the  Colombs  of  Bordeaux,  the  Pigaches  of 
Rouen,  who,  even  when  they  had  become  heads  of  the  munici- 
pality and  councillors  of  sovereigns,  did  not  blush  to  continue 
their  business  and  hand  it  on  to  their  children  ;  commerce  and 
industry  are  forbidden  for  officials  as  well  as  gentlemen  ;  at  the 
most  they  may  be  allowed  to  engage  in  maritime  commerce  on 
a  large  scale  which  even  the  nobility  can  carry  on  without 
degradation.  As  soon  as  anyone  has  the  smallest  fortune  his 
only  ambition  is  to  get  out  of  the  class  of  merchants  and  trades- 
people who  have  no  position  in  the  state  :  to  remain  in  it,  is  as 
much  as  to  confess  that  one  is  too  poor  to  buy  an  appointment 
or  too  ignorant  to  carry  it  on.  The  contempt  of  the  counter  and 
the  workshop  is  an  hereditary  evil  with  us  :  it  is  one  of  the 
still  surviving  prejudices  of  ancient  society."  l 

But  the  still  stronger  attraction  of  public  offices  to  positive 
people  like  manufacturers,  was  that  they  offered  a  sure  and 
regular  income,  tending  to  increase  with  time  and  advancement ; 
whereas  industry,  when  it  was  kept  under  the  royal  thumb 
by  taxes  and  ordinances,  was  an  ill-assured  means  of  profit,  and 
was  exposed  to  bitter  mortifications  when  the  kings  withdrew 
1  Pigeonneau,  Histoire  du  Commerce  de  la  France,  pp.  174-177. 


FRANCE  429 

the  help  by  means  of  which  they  had  tried  to  compensate 
it  for  the  evils  they  had  caused.  The  capriciousness  of  royal 
intervention,  which  we  noted  with  regard  to  agriculture,  is 
reproduced,  as  we  should  expect,  in  the  case  of  industry. 

Let  us  glance  at  a  few  more  lines  of  this  instructive  history  : 

"  In  spite  of  the  misery  which  appeared  in  some  parts, 
France  under  Francis  i.  (whose  efforts  in  favour  of  industry 
we  have  noted)  and  under  Henry  n.  had  been  prosperous  : 
even  the  nature  of  the  complaints  to  which  the  States-general 
gave  utterance  in  1560  prove  that  if  the  nation  recognised 
abuses  and  deplored  them,  it  was  not  a  prey  to  those  acute 
sufferings  which  were  described  with  such  eloquence  in  the 
deliberations  and  recommendations  of  the  States-general  of 
1484." 

So  far,  so  good  ;  but  let  us  turn  over  the  page. 

"  Thirty  years  later,  what  had  become  of  that  industry 
which  used  to  compete  with  that  of  Italy  and  Flanders  ?  We 
cannot  enter  into  the  bloody  history  of  the  three  last  Valois, 
we  can  only  state  the  results  :  the  work  of  a  century  was  undone 
in  a  few  years,  and  France  placed  in  almost  as  disastrous  a 
position  as  that  from  which  Charles  vn.  and  Louis  xi.  had 
rescued  her  a  hundred  years  before."  l 

Is  this  sufficiently  clear  ?  Everything  moves  in  accordance 
with  the  movement  originated  by  the  kings,  and  that  movement 
is  never  continuous  and  cannot  be  sustained. 

"  The  correspondence  of  the  Venetian  ambassadors — and 
what  authoritative  weight  there  is  in  historical  documents  ! 
— the  correspondence  of  the  Venetian  ambassadors,  which 
under  Francis  I.  and  Henry  n.  bears  witness  on  every  page  to 
the  grandeur  and  wealth  of  France  (however,  we  know  the 
weak  side  of  it),  mentions  the  universal  misery  with  a  sort  of 
stupefaction.  '  The  clergy  are  ruined,'  wrote  John  Correro  in 
1569,  c  the  nobles  are  in  a  bad  way  ;  the  country-people  have 
been  so  plundered  and  preyed  upon  by  the  sheriff's  officers  that 
they  have  scarcely  the  wherewithal  to  cover  their  nakedness. 
Only  the  burgesses  and  the  members  of  Parliament  have  gold 
in  plenty.'  The  Venetian  envoys  were  right  in  saying  that  the 
burgesses — that  is  to  say,  the  tradesmen  in  the  towns — still 
escaped  ruin :  but  let  us  wait  for  the  end ;  it  is  not  far  off. 
1  Pigeonneau,  Histoire  du  Commerce  de  la  France,  pp.  178,  179. 


430     GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES 

"  As  was  the  case  in  the  Hundred  Years'  War,  the  towns 
suffered  less  than  the  country  districts  ;  behind  their  walls  they 
could  brave  the  attacks  of  isolated  bands  which  were  the 
peasants'  scourge.  The  manufacture  of  articles  of  luxury 
which  had  been  stimulated  by  Francis  i.  continued  even  in 
the  midst  of  the  perils  of  war  (the  wars  of  religion) ;  in  spite  of 
the  financial  embarrassments  of  the  king  and  the  treasury,  the 
court  was  more  brilliant  than  ever  :  Henry  in.  spent  1,200,000 
crowns  upon  a  single  pageant.  The  brilliant  and  prosperous 
France  of  the  first  half  of  the  sixteenth  century  outlived  her- 
self. Her  sudden  progress,  which  was  in  some  degree  only  the 
result  of  an  unnatural  development, at  last  ceased;  her  factitious 
prosperity  vanished :  industry  foundered  like  agriculture. 
At  the  end  of  the  reign  of  Charles  ix.,  the  exodus  of  artisans 
who  went  to  Germany,  Lorraine,  Geneva,  and  even  Italy,  to 
seek  the  quiet  and  the  work  which  they  no  longer  found  in 
France,  began  afresh,  as  in  the  fifteenth  century.  In  1588  the 
manufacture  of  cloth  diminished  by  a  quarter ;  the  silk 
factories  at  Orleans  were  ruined  ;  at  Amiens  six  thousand  work- 
men were  living  on  charity.  At  Paris,  it  was  found  necessary 
in  1574  to  open  public  workshops  in  order  to  give  employment 
to  vagabonds  and  beggars  who  encumbered  the  streets, 
etc."  i 

The  working  of  this  terrible  piece  of  machinery  created  in 
the  main  by  the  kings,  is  admirably  described  in  the  pages 
which  we  have  just  quoted  from  the  incontestable  historian. 
They  give  the  general  expression  of  the  facts  ;  they  describe  not 
a  mere  episode,  but  the  constantly  recurring  results  of  the  system 
of  government.  If  we  turn  to  the  pages  following,  we  shall 
find  an  exact  repetition  of  the  beginning. 

In  dealing  with  agriculture,  I  mentioned  the  attempts  made 
by  Henry  iv.  and  Sully  to  revive  it :  here  we  are  dealing  with 
industry,  but  the  result  is  the  same:  "What  projects  and  hopes 
Ravaillac's  dagger  destroyed  in  a  flash  :  Henry  iv.'s  task  was 
far  from  being  completed  :  industry  was  recovering  from  the 
exhaustion  of  thirty  years,  but  could  not  yet  walk  with  a  firm 
step.  The  king's  death,  and,  soon  after,  Sully 's  retirement, 
exposed  to  destruction  everything  they  had  founded  :  the 
workshops  at  the  Louvre  were  closed ;  the  factories  built  in 
1  Pigeonneau,  Histoire  du  Commerce  de  la  France,  pp.  182-184. 


FRANCE  431 

Paris  by  Henry  iv.  were  abandoned  ;  the  canal  works  at  Briare 
were  suspended,  etc.  etc."  1 

Sully,  by  the  way,  had  been  much  less  favourable  to  the 
industrial  arts  than  to  "  ploughing  "  and  the  "  pastoral  art." 
He  considered  that  the  majority  of  the  prominent  trades  of 
that  time  produced  luxuries,  and  declared  that  France  "  was 
not  a  suitable  place  for  such  baubles." 

Thus,  matters  were  carried  on  according  as  it  suited  the 
life  and  opinions  of  a  single  man,  namely,  the  king  or  his 
minister. 

There  can  be  no  better  illustration  of  that  fact  than  the 
new  impetus  given  to  industry  by  Colbert  under  Louis  xiv. 
and  the  fresh  disaster  which  followed.  Colbert's  idea  was  to 
make  France  produce  all  that  she  bought  from  the  foreigner  : 
that  was  another  instance  of  a  scheme  based  on  theories  and 
evolved  by  a  single  brain.  Sully's  idea  was  that  people  should 
be  content  to  buy  from  foreigners  what  could  be  less  easily 
produced  in  France. 

Whatever  history  of  Louis  xiv.  the  reader  opens,  he  will 
see  not  that  such  and  such  an  industry  prospered,  thanks  to 
the  initiative  of  such  and  such  a  manager  of  the  trade ;  not 
that  foreign  workmen  came  to  settle  in  France  of  their  own 
accord,  because  they  found  there  a  free  and  open  field  for 
development  of  trade  ;  but  that  Colbert  endowed  France  in 
turn  with  the  manufacture  of  Venetian  glass,  of  Venetian  lace, 
of  Italian  silk  fabrics,  crepes,  taffetas,  velvets,  damasks,  and 
brocades ;  of  Dutch  cloths,  of  English  worsted  and  knitted 
woollen  stockings,  of  English  tempered  steel,  which  was  a 
secret  among  the  English  ;  of  German  tin,  of  which  there  had 
hitherto  been  only  one  factory  in  France,  etc.  It  was  Colbert 
who  did  all  this  :  one  would  imagine  that  he  was  the  general 
contractor  for  all  the  trades,  instead  of  merely  the  general 
superintendent  of  finance.  He  was  supported  in  this  under- 
taking only  by  the  workmen  whom  he  had  himself  chosen 
abroad  and  bought  with  the  royal  funds  in  order  to  teach 
methods  of  work :  when  they  demanded  higher  pay  or 
became  useless,  he  sent  them  back  where  they  came  from,  as 
if  they  were  people  in  his  own  employment. 

However  much  evidence  historians  may  bring  to  show  how 
1  Pigeonneau,  Histoire  du  Commerce  de  la  France,  pp.  350-352. 


434     GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES 

imagined  he  was  delivering  a  master  stroke  when  he  forbade 
the  Flemish  to  come  to  the  fairs  of  Champagne.  It  was  there 
that  the  Flemish  met  the  Italians  :  when  the  Flemish  came 
no  more,  the  Italians  went  to  look  for  them  elsewhere,  and  their 
defection  soon  after  caused  that  of  the  Germans.  France 
ceased  to  be  the  great  market  for  which  she  was  naturally  designed 
by  her  intermediate  position  between  those  nations  whose  com- 
merce was  prosperous.  "  The  Italians  renewed  their  intercourse 
with  the  Flemish,  which  had  been  stopped  by  land,  by  sea  ; 
in  that  way  they  laid  the  foundations  of  the  wonderful  prosperity 
of  Anvers,  which  was  situated  where  the  two  largest  commercial 
currents  of  Europe  met — namely,  that  which  came  from  the 
south  by  the  vessels  of  Venice,  and  that  from  the  north  and 
the  centre  by  the  Hanseatic  fleets  and  the  boat-service  of 
the  Rhine."  * 

The  water-ways  traced  by  the  rivers,  the  roads,  the  toll- 
gates,  all  of  which  were  of  very  great  moment  to  commerce, 
often  came  under  the  consideration  of  the  royal  government. 
There  again,  we  realise  that  everything  was  done  by  "  jerks," 
by  resolutions  that  came  too  late,  after  commerce  had  got 
into  lamentable  difficulties.  The  schemes  that  were  formulated 
at  that  time  were  wonderful,  but  the  execution  of  them  lagged 
far  behind,  and  we  are  forced  to  imagine  that  at  the  end  of  a 
few  years  everything  had  to  be  begun  all  over  again. 

When  historians  observe  the  more  and  more  regular, 
symmetrical,  and  systematic  forms  adopted  by  the  internal 
organisation  of  the  government,  they  admire  the  fair  order 
of  it,  and  forget  that  three-quarters  of  the  time  it  only  exists 
in  writing  or  hardly  lasts  at  all  in  practice  :  they  do  not  go 
to  results.  The  greatest  mistake  they  make  is  to  find  coherence 
in  that  administration  ;  the  disturbances  that  constantly  inter- 
rupt it  in  its  work  prevent  all  coherence ;  the  only  coherence 
there  is,  is  in  its  schemes,  which  are  always  directed  towards 
royal  domination  as  the  terminating  point. 

We  have  reason,  then,  to  modify  the  praises  bestowed 
upon  the  administration  of  that  period  as  regards  means  of 
communication.  When  commerce  is  left  its  liberty,  it  is  better 
able  to  open  up  roads  for  itself  or  to  overcome  successfully 
the  obstacles  it  meets  on  its  path.  The  Hanseatics  crossed 

1  Pigeonneau,  Hi*toire  du  Commerce  de  la  France,  p.  11. 


FRANCE  435 

the  seas,  journeyed  up  and  down  the  streams  and  rivers,  crossed 
the  land  wherever  need  was,  without  being  stopped  by  a  number 
of  material  difficulties,  or  by  attacks  of  pillagers,  or  by  the  exces- 
sive tolls  levied  by  the  lords :  the  reason  was  that  they  had 
developed  freely,  had  adopted  useful  measures  of  their  own 
accord,  and  were  careful  to  see  them  enforced.     But  there  are 
similar  examples  even  in  France  :  in  great  marine  enterprises 
where  liberty  was  more  easily  retained,  the  history  of  two 
celebrated  Frenchmen  shows  us  what  simple  private  men  could 
achieve  when  left  to  themselves  :    I  mean  James  Cceur  and 
Ango.     In  those  bygone  days  they  accomplished  things  that 
would  have  astonished  us  even  in  the  last  century.     But,  as 
everyone  knows,  the  prosperity  of  the  former  was  nipped  by 
Charles  vn.  and  that  of  the  latter  by  Francis  i.     Other  men 
of  less  renown  than  James  Cceur  and  Ango  succeeded  in  making 
their  way  as  their  own  masters  along  the  same  broad  road  of 
maritime  commerce  and  colonisation.     The  common  people — 
Normans,  Bretons,  Picards,  Rochellais,  Marseillais — began  to 
dispute  the  possession  of  the  new  lands  with  Spain  and  Portugal, 
which  claimed  the  rights  of  possession  and  the  right  of  dividing 
them  among  themselves.     But  Francis  I.  thought  it  necessary 
to  yield  to  the  demands  of  those  powers,  and  forbade  the  French 
to  settle  in  the  New  World.     Nevertheless,  "  people  of  Rouen 
and  Dieppe  continued  to  trade  with  Brazil  and  Africa  (Portu- 
guese territory),  and  to  avenge  themselves  as  best  they  could 
for  the  aggressions  of  the  Portuguese.     John  Ango  evaded  the 
prohibition  by  declaring  that  his  vessels  were  bound  for  lands 
where  no  Christian  had  ever  set  foot ;    others  did  not  even 
take  the  trouble  to  evade  the  law,  and  contented  themselves 
with  making  false  declarations  and  buying  the  silence  of  the 
officials.     In  1579,  1580,  and  1581,  whole  squadrons,  sometimes 
numbering  eighteen  vessels,  used  to  set  out  from  Dieppe,  Havre, 
Rouen,  La  Rochelle,  bound   for  Brazil.     Unfortunately,  the 
Spanish  Government  appeared  as  pig-headed  as  the  French 
merchants.     It  sent  out  fleets  to  oppose  our  squadrons,  armies 
to  oppose  our  bands  of  adventurers  ;   all  the  forces  of  the  most 
powerful  empire  in  the  world  to  oppose  the  daring  efforts  of 
plain  private  men." 

And  here  let  me  quote  the  authoritative  conclusion  drawn 
by  the  author  I  have  just  quoted,  whom  I  have  the  good  fortune 


434     GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES 

imagined  lie  was  delivering  a  master  stroke  when  he  forbade 
the  Flemish  to  come  to  the  fairs  of  Champagne.  It  was  there 
that  the  Flemish  met  the  Italians  :  when  the  Flemish  came 
no  more,  the  Italians  went  to  look  for  them  elsewhere,  and  their 
defection  soon  after  caused  that  of  the  Germans.  France 
ceased  to  be  the  great  market  for  which  she  was  naturally  designed 
by  her  intermediate  position  between  those  nations  whose  com- 
merce was  prosperous.  "  The  Italians  renewed  their  intercourse 
with  the  Flemish,  which  had  been  stopped  by  land,  by  sea  ; 
in  that  way  they  laid  the  foundations  of  the  wonderful  prosperity 
of  Anvers,  which  was  situated  where  the  two  largest  commercial 
currents  of  Europe  met — namely,  that  which  came  from  the 
south  by  the  vessels  of  Venice,  and  that  from  the  north  and 
the  centre  by  the  Hanseatic  fleets  and  the  boat-service  of 
the  Rhine."  1 

The  water-ways  traced  by  the  rivers,  the  roads,  the  toll- 
gates,  all  of  which  were  of  very  great  moment  to  commerce, 
often  came  under  the  consideration  of  the  royal  government. 
There  again,  we  realise  that  everything  was  done  by  "  jerks," 
by  resolutions  that  came  too  late,  after  commerce  had  got 
into  lamentable  difficulties.  The  schemes  that  were  formulated 
at  that  time  were  wonderful,  but  the  execution  of  them  lagged 
far  behind,  and  we  are  forced  to  imagine  that  at  the  end  of  a 
few  years  everything  had  to  be  begun  all  over  again. 

When  historians  observe  the  more  and  more  regular, 
symmetrical,  and  systematic  forms  adopted  by  the  internal 
organisation  of  the  government,  they  admire  the  fair  order 
of  it,  and  forget  that  three-quarters  of  the  time  it  only  exists 
in  writing  or  hardly  lasts  at  all  in  practice  :  they  do  not  go 
to  results.  The  greatest  mistake  they  make  is  to  find  coherence 
in  that  administration  ;  the  disturbances  that  constantly  inter- 
rupt it  in  its  work  prevent  all  coherence ;  the  only  coherence 
there  is,  is  in  its  schemes,  which  are  always  directed  towards 
royal  domination  as  the  terminating  point. 

We  have  reason,  then,  to  modify  the  praises  bestowed 
upon  the  administration  of  that  period  as  regards  means  of 
communication.  When  commerce  is  left  its  liberty,  it  is  better 
able  to  open  up  roads  for  itself  or  to  overcome  successfully 
the  obstacles  it  meets  on  its  path.  The  Hanseatics  crossed 

1  Pigeonneau,  Hi*toire  du  Commerce  de  la  France,  p.  11. 


FRANCE  435 

the  seas,  journeyed  up  and  down  the  streams  and  rivers,  crossed 
the  land  wherever  need  was,  without  being  stopped  by  a  number 
of  material  difficulties,  or  by  attacks  of  pillagers,  or  by  the  exces- 
sive tolls  levied  by  the  lords  :  the  reason  was  that  they  had 
developed  freely,  had  adopted  useful  measures  of  their  own 
accord,  and  were  careful  to  see  them  enforced.     But  there  are 
similar  examples  even  in  France  :  in  great  marine  enterprises 
where  liberty  was  more  easily  retained,  the  history  of  two 
celebrated  Frenchmen  shows  us  what  simple  private  men  could 
achieve  when  left  to  themselves  :    I  mean  James  Cceur  and 
Ango.     In  those  bygone  days  they  accomplished  things  that 
would  have  astonished  us  even  in  the  last  century.     But,  as 
everyone  knows,  the  prosperity  of  the  former  was  nipped  by 
Charles  vn.  and  that  of  the  latter  by  Francis  I.     Other  men 
of  less  renown  than  James  Coeur  and  Ango  succeeded  in  making 
their  way  as  their  own  masters  along  the  same  broad  road  of 
maritime  commerce  and  colonisation.     The  common  people — 
Normans,  Bretons,  Picards,  Rochellais,  Marseillais — began  to 
dispute  the  possession  of  the  new  lands  with  Spain  and  Portugal, 
which  claimed  the  rights  of  possession  and  the  right  of  dividing 
them  among  themselves.     But  Francis  I.  thought  it  necessary 
to  yield  to  the  demands  of  those  powers,  and  forbade  the  French 
to  settle  in  the  New  World.     Nevertheless,  "  people  of  Rouen 
and  Dieppe  continued  to  trade  with  Brazil  and  Africa  (Portu- 
guese territory),  and  to  avenge  themselves  as  best  they  could 
for  the  aggressions  of  the  Portuguese.     John  Ango  evaded  the 
prohibition  by  declaring  that  his  vessels  were  bound  for  lands 
where  no  Christian  had  ever  set  foot ;    others  did  not  even 
take  the  trouble  to  evade  the  law,  and  contented  themselves 
with  making  false  declarations  and  buying  the  silence  of  the 
officials.     In  1579,  1580,  and  1581,  whole  squadrons,  sometimes 
numbering  eighteen  vessels,  used  to  set  out  from  Dieppe,  Havre, 
Rouen,  La  Rochelle,  bound   for  Brazil.     Unfortunately,  the 
Spanish  Government  appeared  as  pig-headed  as  the  French 
merchants.     It  sent  out  fleets  to  oppose  our  squadrons,  armies 
to  oppose  our  bands  of  adventurers  ;   all  the  forces  of  the  most 
powerful  empire  in  the  world  to  oppose  the  daring  efforts  of 
plain  private  men." 

And  here  let  me  quote  the  authoritative  conclusion  drawn 
by  the  author  I  have  just  quoted,  whom  I  have  the  good  fortune 


436     GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES 

to  know  personally,  and  who  is  an  authority  on  every  subject, 
and  is  free  from  all  suspicion  of  partiality  :  "  The  nation 
therefore  must  not  be  blamed  for  our  failures.  In  America,  in 
Africa,  and  in  the  far  eastern  seas,  the  nation  had  preceded  the 
State  and  shown  it  the  way  ;  the  State  did  not  follow  it.  The 
kings,  who  were  entirely  absorbed  in  their  internal  affairs  or 
their  ambitious  policy  in  Europe,  had  only  paid  attention  in 
a  distracted  and  intermittent  manner  to  discoveries,  and  distant 
commerce,  and  colonial  enterprises.  They  did  not  even  leave 
them  alone.  Francis  i.  forbade  his  own  subjects  to  lay  claim 
to  Portuguese  territory."  l 

We  must  follow  matters  to  the  end.  Our  object  is  to 
go  through  the  great  epochs  of  monarchy :  after  Francis  i. 
we  come  to  Henry  iv.  What  happened  to  commerce 
then? 

"  France  could  no  longer  dream  of  disputing  with  the 
Spaniards  their  empire  in  the  Antillas,  Mexico,  South  America, 
which  had  lasted  almost  a  century,  or  even  their  more  recent 
conquest  in  Florida.  The  English  had  taken  possession  of 
Newfoundland,  and  were  trying  to  get  footing  in  Virginia. 
The  Dutch  were  about  to  settle  in  the  countries  which,  for 
more  than  half  a  century,  bore  the  name  of  New  Belgium,  and 
which  correspond  to  New  York  State  of  the  present  day. 
The  Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence,  on  the  contrary,  though  it  was  fre- 
quented by  Dutch  and  English  fishermen,  was  considered  as 
the  peculiar  domain  of  France  from  the  time  of  James  Cartier 
and  Roberval.  In  that  way  French  marine  traders  were 
attracted  to  Canada.  But  Henry  iv.  was  not  wise  enough 
to  uphold  strongly  the  rights  he  had  granted  over  the  lands 
that  were  called  French  to  the  small  companies  which  were 
then  formed.  The  colonies  disappeared  when  their  privileges 
were  withdrawn.  So  we  have  the  same  instability  in  com- 
mercial enterprises  owing  to  the  omnipotence  and  shiftiness 
of  the  royal  administration.  There  is  nothing  which  so  well 
illustrates  this  point  as  M.  Leon  Germ's  splendid  essays  on  the 
early  days  of  Canada."  2 

1  Pigeonneau,  Histoire  du  Commerce  de  la  France,  pp.  151,  171. 

2  La  Science  Sociale,  vol.  xi.  pp.  320,  526  ;  vol.  xii.  pp.  161,  544  ;  vol.  xiii. 
p.  519 ;  vol.  xiv.  p.  374 ;  vol.  xv.  p.  426  ;  vol.  xvi.  p.  296  ;  vol.  xvii.  p.  318 ;  vol. 
xviii.  p.  417. 


FRANCE  437 

After  Henry  iv.,  Richelieu  made  an  effort  to  recover  what 
had  been  lost.  It  was  in  vain,  and  for  the  same  reason. 

"  He  failed  in  his  projects  in  the  Levant.  He  only  half 
succeeded  in  Northern  Africa.  In  the  Antillas,  where  French 
colonisation  had  assumed  proportions  beyond  the  highest 
hopes,  we  owe  thanks  to  the  genius  which  inspired  the  Norman 
race,  and  to  the  initiative  of  the  emigrants  rather  than  to  the 
Government  and  the  companies.  Richelieu's  companies,  some 
of  which  were  too  ambitious,  while  others  were  too  modest, 
never  got  further  than  the  mere  outline  :  they  were  hampered 
as  much  as  they  were  supported  by  the  permanent  intervention 
of  government,  they  never  shook  off  the  leading-strings,  and 
had  not  learned,  like  the  great  foreign  companies  (English  and 
Dutch),  to  do  without  the  State."  l 

Under  Louis  xiv.,  or,  more  correctly,  "under  Colbert,"  a  new 
effort  was  made.  But  commerce  encountered  the  same  check 
as  industry  had  done.  At  first  the  results  were  brilliant ;  then, 
soon  after,  when  Colbert  was  brushed  aside  and  Louvois  con- 
ducted the  war,  the  finances,  the  navy,  and  commerce  were 
overwhelmed  in  the  same  ruin.  In  vain  did  France  receive 
the  new  domain  of  Louisiana  as  the  result  of  the  explorations 
of  Cavalier  de  La  Salle  in  1682 ;  in  vain  did  she  find  herself 
the  possessor  of  rights  extending  from  the  glacial  regions  to 
the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  over  all  North  America  to  the  west  of  the 
Alleghanies,  owing  to  the  settlements  the  French  had  made 
in  Canada,  and  to  La  Salle's  first  expedition  to  reconnoitre  the 
course  of  the  Mississippi :  scarcely  had  a  century  elapsed  when 
all  these  possessions  had  passed  to  England,  together  with  the 
supremacy  in  agriculture,  industry,  and  commerce. 

Besides,  it  must  be  observed  that  even  if  France  had  been 
able,  in  spite  of  the  restraint  put  upon  her  by  the  Government, 
again  to  arouse  a  spirit  of  enterprise  in  the  best  of  the  sailors 
and  merchants  engaged  in  maritime  commerce  far  away  from 
her  frontiers,  she  could  not  have  created  the  same  energy  in 
the  class  that  was  fixed  to  her  land  :  she  lacked  agricultural 
colonists  ;  and  that  was  the  reason  why  the  results  of  the  bold 
enterprises  of  the  merchants  over-seas  were  so  poor  even  at 
the  best  of  times  :  they  could  scarcely  induce  anyone  but  vaga- 
bonds and  criminals  to  enlist  for  the  new  countries.  We  cannot 
1  Pigeonneau,  Histoire  du  Commerce  de  la  France,  pp.  454,  455. 


438     GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES 

wonder  at  it  after  having  seen  that  France  showed  the  first  signs 
of  her  decadence,  under  the  domination  of  the  Government, 
in  her  agriculture.  There  is  not,  there  never  was,  and  the 
order  of  social  facts  has  determined  that  there  never  will  be, 
any  enduring  colonial  commerce  for  a  nation  that  does  not  pro- 
duce vigorous  agricultural  colonists.  We  find  at  the  end  of 
our  analysis  that  this  is  the  first  cause  of  the  decline  of  the 
wonderful  Frankish  nation :  the  loss  of  the  independence  of 
the  estate  and  of  its  social  and  political  supremacy. 

It  remains  for  us  to  see  how  the  Revolution  strengthened 
in  more  than  one  respect  the  tendencies  of  the  social  system 
which  the  great  monarchy  had  built  up  in  France. 

We  shall  then  terminate  our  study  of  the  great  monarchies 
by  examining  the  new  German  Empire. 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

THE  GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES  OF  MODERN  TIMES : 
THE  CONNECTION  BETWEEN  THE  ANCIEN  REGIME 
AND  THE  REVOLUTION 

THE  French  Revolution,  contrary  to  the  received  dictum, 
was  not,  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word,  a  social  revolu- 
tion: it  did  not  fundamentally  modify  the  anti-particularist  type, 
which  was  reconstituted  in  France  under  the  great  monarchy. 

One  of  its  serious  faults  was  that  it  put  people  on  the  wrong 
track  in  this  respect :  that  explains  most  of  the  many  mistakes 
which  it  has  caused  for  more  than  a  century.  The  Revolution 
has  been  celebrated  as  the  decisive  entry  of  the  country  into 
the  rank  of  the  nations  for  whom  a  future  is  in  store  ;  but,  in 
spite  of  the  success  of  some  of  its  great  political  and  legislative 
reforms,  it  did  not  really  succeed  in  diverting  the  spirit  of  the 
French  from  the  communal  form  of  society  into  which  they  had 
lapsed  since  the  natural  dissolution  of  the  feudal  system  ;  and 
from  this  point  of  view  the  famous  words  of  the  Duke  of  Roche- 
foucauld-Liancourt  to  Louis  xvi.  with  regard  to  the  taking  of 
the  Bastille  can  be  truly  applied  to  it,  that  it  was  more  of  a 
revolt  than  a  revolution. 

The  fact  that  the  Revolution  carried  on  the  old  system  of 
administration  only  too  completely  is  made  apparent  to-day 
to  many  people  of  different  opinions  by  public  utterances,  but 
historians,  serious  observers,  could  not  have  failed  to  remark 
it  for  some  time  past,  whatever  may  have  been  their  former 
prejudices.  I  need  only  quote  the  great  example  of  the  parallel 
works  of  Tocqueville  and  Taine,  masters  who  came  from  very 
different  schools. 

In  order  to  continue  our  method  of  analysing  social  facts, 
let  us  find  out  the  exact  reason  why  the  Revolution  came  as 
a  sequel  to  the  old  administration  without  making  any  real 

439 


440     GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES 

break  in  its  continuity,  and  why  it  did  not  abandon,  after  all, 
the  system  of  government  of  the  great  European  monarchies 
of  modern  times. 

The  two  powers  which  had  contended  with  each  other  under 
the  names  of  feudalism  and  royalty  were  in  reality  the  par- 
ticularist  agricultural  domain  and  the  public  treasury.  An 
examination  of  the  final  position,  relatively  to  each  other, 
in  which  these  two  conflicting  forces  were  placed,  will  show  us 
how  the  monarchy  merged  into  the  Revolution. 

In  the  first  place,  let  us  look  at  the  condition  of  the  agri- 
cultural domain,  which  had  long  ceased  to  be  particularist, 
as  we  know. 

The  evidence  on  this  point  is  abundant ;  let  us  take  some 
of  the  most  important  witnesses  : 

In  1740,  Massillon,  Bishop  of  Clermont-Ferrand,  writes  at 
Fleury :  "  The  people  in  our  country  districts  live  in  a  terrible 
state  of  misery,  without  beds,  without  any  furniture  :  the 
greater  part  of  them  are  half  the  year  without  barley  bread 
and  oat  bread,  which  are  their  sole  form  of  food,  and  which  they 
are  obliged  to  take  from  their  own  mouths  and  from  the  mouths 
of  their  children  to  pay  the  taxes.  Every  year  I  have  to  suffer 
the  anguish  of  seeing  this  miserable  spectacle  in  my  visits. 
In  this  respect  the  negroes  of  our  islands  have  an  infinitely 
happier  lot,  for,  in  return  for  their  work,  they  are  clothed  and 
fed  as  well  as  their  wives  and  children,  whereas  our  peasants, 
who  are  as  hard-working  as  any  in  the  kingdom,  cannot  get 
bread  enough  for  themselves  and  their  families  and  the  where- 
withal to  pay  the  taxes,  even  with  the  hardest  and  most  per- 
sistent work." 

It  may  be  objected  that  that  happened  in  Auvergne,  which 
was  a  poor  province.  But  look  at  the  country  round  Paris, 
in  Touraine,  and  in  Normandy.  ; 

In  the  neighbourhood  of  Paris  :  "  In  my  country  district,  ten 
miles  from  Paris  (it  is  not  very  far  !)  I  find,"  writes  Argenson, 
"  the  spectacle  of  misery  and  the  continual  complaints  more 
than  redoubled.  What  then  must  be  the  condition  of  our 
unfortunate  provinces  in  the  heart  of  the  kingdom  ?  My 
vicar  tells  me  that  eight  families,  who  were  living  on  the  produce 
of  their  labour  before  my  departure,  are  now  begging  their 
bread.  Employment  cannot  be  found  ;  the  rich  people  are 

/^^rlP^ 
f  UNIVERSITY 

V     ^  OF 


ANCIEN  REGIME  AND  THE  REVOLUTION    441 

cutting  down  their  expenditure  proportionately,  like  the  poor  ; 
and  at  the  same  time  the  taxes  are  collected  with  a  more  than 
military  sternness.  The  tax-collectors,  accompanied  by  sheriff's 
officers  and  locksmiths,  open  the  doors,  carry  off  the  furniture, 
and  sell  it  all  for  a  quarter  of  what  it  is  worth  ;  and  the  expenses 
exceed  the  dues."  And  elsewhere :  "  Paris  swarms  with  beggars ; 
one  cannot  stop  at  a  door  without  ten  ragamuffins  coming 
up  to  shout  at  one.  It  is  said  that  they  are  all  country-people 
who  would  no  longer  endure  the  trials  they  undergo  there, 
and  have  come  to  take  refuge  in  the  town."  x 

In  Touraine  :  "  I  am  now  staying  at  my  estates  in  Touraine," 
Argenson  writes  elsewhere.  "  The  poor  inhabitants  have  gone 
through  all  the  stages  of  wretchedness  and  misery,  and  are 
now  in  a  state  of  despair.  Their  only  wish  is  to  die,  and  they 
avoid  having  children."  (This  reminds  us  of  the  speech  made 
by  the  Peasant  from  the  Danube. )  "From  what  my  neighbours 
say,  the  population  seems  to  be  diminished  by  more  than  one- 
third.  The  day-labourers  all  make  up  their  minds  to  go  and 
take  refuge  in  the  small  towns.  There  are  numbers  of  villages 
that  are  entirely  deserted.  But  the  impositions  always  go  on 
just  the  same.  The  expenses  of  the  collecting  of  the  rates 
and  taxes  every  year  amount  to  half  as  much  again  as  the 
taxes.  One  of  the  judges  of  the  court  of  the  election  came  to 
the  village  where  my  country  house  is,  and  said  that  the  dues 
in  this  parish  ought  to  be  very  much  increased  this  year  ;  that 
he  had  noticed  the  peasants  here  were  heartier  than  elsewhere  ; 
that  he  had  seen  feathers  of  chickens  on  the  steps  before  the 
doors,  and  judged  that  the  people  were  making  good  cheer 
within.  .  .  .  That  is  what  discourages  the  peasants  and  causes 
misery  in  the  kingdom."  The  contest  between  the  agricultural 
domain  and  the  public  treasury  is  only  too  clearly  indicated 
by  these  direct  pieces  of  evidence,  which  were  not  drawn  up 
to  make  a  case. 

Argenson  learns  the  state  of  things  in  Normandy.  "  At 
Rouen  and  in  Normandy,"  he  writes,  "  even  the  people  that 
are  the  most  well-off  have  difficulty  in  getting  bread  to  live 
upon  ;  the  generality  of  the  people  are  entirely  without  it, 
and  are  reduced,  in  order  to  avoid  dying  of  starvation,  to 
making  up  food  that  would  horrify  the  ordinary  human  being. 
1  Taine,  ISAncien  Regime  et  la  Revolution,  p.  435. 


442     GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES 

There  are  more  than  twelve  thousand  workmen  begging  at 
Rouen.  A  man  who  knows  all  about  finance  told  me  that 
more  than  two  hundred  families  left  Normandy  this  year 
through  fear  of  the  gathering  of  taxes  in  their  villages." 
History  bears  witness  to  revolts  in  that  province  alone  in  1725, 
1737,  1739,  1752,  1764,  1765,  1766,  1767,  1768,  which  were  all 
due  to  lack  of  bread.  Even  the  Parliament  of  Normandy  is 
witness  that  "  whole  hamlets,  which  were  lacking  all  the  neces- 
saries of  life,  were  obliged,  in  their  need,  to  descend  to  animals' 
food."  i 

This  state  of  things  was  so  flagrant,  that  it  was  recognised 
and  attested  by  even  the  agents  of  the  royal  administration, 
by  its  highest  functionaries  in  the  provinces,  and  by  the 
governors. 

The  Governor  of  Bourges  declared  that  a  large  number 
of  farmers  had  sold  their  furniture  ;  that  whole  families  had 
passed  two  days  without  eating  ;  that  in  several  parishes  the 
starving  people  remained  in  bed  the  greater  part  of  the  day 
so  as  to  suffer  less. 

The  Governor  of  Orleans  summed  up  his  opinion  in  these 
words  :  "  The  cry  of  want  cannot  be  reproduced  ;  it  is  necessary 
to  see  the  misery  of  the  country  districts  with  one's  own  eyes 
in  order  to  get  some  idea  of  it." 

From  Riom,  La  Rochelle,  Limoges,  Lyon,  Montauban,  Caen, 
Alen9on,  French  Flanders,  and  Moulins,  the  governors  sent 
similar  news. 

The  Governor  of  Dijon  wrote  :  "  In  Burgundy,  near  Chatil- 
lon-sur-Seine,  the  taxes,  manorial  dues  and  tithes,  and  the 
expenses  of  agriculture  consume  between  them  the  produce  of 
the  land  and  leave  nothing  for  the  miserable  labourers,  who 
would  have  abandoned  their  fields  had  not  two  Swiss  con- 
tractors, manufacturers  of  painted  cloths,  come  to  scatter  over 
the  country  forty  thousand  francs  of  ready  money  per  annum." 2 

So  the  same  thing  happened  over  again  as  had  happened 
in  Gaul  under  the  system  of  government  of  the  imperial 
treasury  before  the  arrival  of  the  Franks.  The  land  was 
deserted,  owing  to  the  impossibility  of  paying  the  taxes ; 
but  the  royal  administration,  following  the  example  of  that 
of  the  Romans,  opposed  this,  the  last  means  of  libera- 
1  Taine,  pp.  435,  436.  2  Ibid.,  passim. 


ANCIEN  REGIME  AND  THE  REVOLUTION    443 

tion,  and  continued  to  hold  the  landowner,  at  any  rate  in  certain 
cases,  responsible  even  for  the  payment  of  the  dues.  At  the 
Provincial  Assembly  of  Upper  Guyenne  held  in  1784,  it  was 
said  "  that  the  lot  of  the  most  heavily  taxed  communities  of 
peasants  was  so  severe  that  on  several  occasions  proprietors 
had  been  found  to  abandon  the  land.  Who  did  not  remember 
how  the  inhabitants  of  Saint-Sernin  abandoned  their  property 
as  many  as  ten  times,  and  were  threatening  to  adopt  that 
painful  resolution  again  when  they  appealed  to  the  Govern- 
ment ?  Some  years  before,  the  inhabitants,  the  lord  of  the 
manor,  and  the  tithe  owner  of  the  community  had  combined 
together  to  abandon  the  (peasant)  community  of  Boisse."  And 
Taine  adds  :  "  The  desertion  would  be  still  greater  if  the  law 
did  not  forbid  all  those  liable  to  pay  taxes  to  abandon  an  over- 
taxed property,  unless  they  renounced  at  the  same  time  all 
that  they  possessed  in  the  same  community."  l  "A  quarter 
of  the  soil,"  says  a  contemporary,  "  is  purely  waste  land.  The 
moors  and  heaths,  more  often  than  not,  form  huge  deserts, 
and  cover  thousands  of  acres."  One  has  only  to  go  through 
Anjou,  Maine,  Brittany,  Poitou,  Limousin,  Marche,  Berry, 
Nivernais,  Bourbonnais,  Auvergne,  to  see  that  half  those  pro- 
vinces are  heaths  covering  immense  flat  areas  which  might 
all  be  under  cultivation.  Sologne,  which  was  prosperous  in 
former  days,  has  become  a  marsh  and  a  forest.  A  hundred 
years  back  it  produced  three  times  as  much  corn ;  two-thirds 
of  its  mills  have  disappeared ;  not  a  trace  is  left  of  its  vine- 
yards ;  heather  has  taken  the  place  of  the  grapes.  The  Agri- 
cultural Society  of  Eennes  declares  that  two-thirds  of  Brittany 
are  waste  land.2 

It  seems  clear  that,  in  this  state  of  things,  the  great  land- 
owners were  going  to  their  ruin  as  fast  as  the  farmers  and 
metayers.  "Everywhere  one  sees  deserted  and  ruined  chateaux ; 
all  the  manor  houses  on  the  fiefs  which  were  formerly  inhabited 
by  a  class  of  nobles  who  were  comfortably  off  are  now  occupied 
by  poor  shepherd  farmers  who  scarcely  produce  enough  by 
their  scant  labour  to  provide  themselves  with  food  and  to  pay 
what  dues  still  remain,  for  they  have  mostly  disappeared 
owing  to  the  ruin  of  the  landowners  and  the  desertion  of  the 
cultivators.  In  the  election  of  Confolens,  such  and  such  an 
1  Taine,  pp.  439,  440.  2  Ibid.,  p.  442. 


444     GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES 

estate  that  was  leased  out  in  1665  for  £2956,  in  1747  does 
not  let  for  more  than  £900  :  it  is  therefore  worth  less  than 
a  third,  less  still  if  allowance  is  made  for  the  depreciation 
of  money.  On  the  borders  of  Marche  and  Berry  a  certain 
estate  which  in  1660  honourably  supported  two  noble  families, 
is  nothing  more  now  than  a  small  unproductive  farm ;  on  all 
the  heaths  in  the  neighbourhood  can  still  be  seen  the  traces  of 
furrows  which  were  once  made  by  the  ploughshare."  l 

A  comparison  with  England  at  that  same  period  shows  up  to 
a  terrible  extent  the  agricultural  decline  in  France,  which  had 
been  the  land  of  agriculture  par  excellence.  Arthur  Young, 
in  1787  in  his  Travels  in  France,  calculates  that  an  acre  of  land 
in  England  yields  28  bushels  of  corn,  and  in  France  18  ;  that 
the  total  amount  of  produce  from  land  of  the  same  kind  and  in 
the  same  space  of  time  is  worth  36  pounds  sterling  in  England, 
and  only  25  in  France  .^He  comes  to  the  conclusion  that 
"  those  who  live  in  France  by  their  labour  in  the  fields — and 
they  form  the  greater  part  of  the  population — are  76  per  cent, 
less  well  off  than  in  England,  and  76  per  cent,  worse  fed,  worse 
clothed,  worse  treated  in  health  and  in  sickness."  "  No 
Englishman  who  has  not  left  his  country,"  he  says  elsewhere, 
"  can  picture  to  himself  the  appearance  of  the  majority  of  the 
French  peasants." 

The  deplorable  inability  of  agriculture  to  get  recruits  for 
its  service  resulted,  in  many  places,  in  the  substitution  of 
metayers  (i.e.  farmers  who  pay  one-half  of  the  produce  to  the 
owner  of  the  land)  for  ordinary  farmers  (paying  rent)  :  "In 
seven-eighths  of  the  kingdom  there  are  no  farmers — only  meta- 
yers :  the  peasant  is  too  poor  to  undertake  agriculture,  he  has 
no  capital  for  farming."  The  landowner  is  even  obliged  to 
advance  him  the  money  for  his  food  till  the  first  harvest.  That 
is  another  striking  point  of  contrast  with  England,  where  the 
system  of  ordinary  farming  flourished.2 

Whilst  one  part  of  the  domains  was  left  to  go  to  waste,  and 
another  was  given  up  to  miserable  metayers,  a  third  was 
frittered  away  in  small  plots  which  the  lords  sold  when  they 
came  to  the  end  of  their  resources.  But  the  purchase  of  these 
plots  exhausted  the  savings  of  the  better-to-do  among  the 
country-people,  who  were  as  powerless  as  the  poor  metayers 
1  Taine,  ibid.  2  See  Taine,  pp.  443-446. 


ANCIEN  REGIME  AND  THE  REVOLUTION     445 

to  pay  for  the  costs  of  cultivation.  "  Agriculture  such  as  is 
carried  on  by  our  peasants  (landowners),"  says  the  Marquis  of 
Mirabeau,  "  is  terrible  drudgery.  They  perish  by  thousands 
in  infancy,  and  when  they  reach  manhood  they  try  to  get 
employment  everywhere  except  where  they  should  be." 
About  1760  it  is  estimated  that  a  quarter  of  the  land  had  been 
in  this  way  split  up  into  small  fragments  without  any  profit  to 
any  of  the  parties  interested,  for  the  expenses  that  fell  upon 
the  small  purchaser  overwhelmed  him,  and  the  money  the  lord 
gained  from  the  alienation  of  his  property  often  went  to  pay 
the  dues  for  the  rest  of  his  estate.  In  1772  the  Governor  of 
Caen,  when  collecting  the  land-taxes,  calculated  that  of  150,000 
assessments  "  there  were  perhaps  50,000  whose  value  did  not 
exceed  five  sous,  and  perhaps  as  many  which  did  not  exceed 
20  sous." 

It  is  easy  to  picture  the  state  of  the  domain :  (1)  immense 
stretches  of  land  lying  waste,  formerly  fertile  ;  (2)  small  culti- 
vated fields,  let  out  to  metayers,  poor  half -starved  men,  which 
brought  in  to  the  lord  only  a  very  small  profit  when  once  the 
taxes  had  been  paid  ;  (3)  scanty  plots  of  land  in  the  possession 
of  indigent  owners. 

We  have  already  seen  something  of  the  great  exodus,  which 
was  the  reverse  of  the  movement  set  up  by  the  Franks,  and 
brought  the  population  of  the  country  districts  to  the  towns  ; 
but  let  us  look  at  it  now  that  it  has  been  carried  to  the  extreme. 

For  the  nobility,  all  the  favours,  all  the  advantages  (and 
they  were  great)  were  at  the  court,  and  consequently  at  Paris 
and  Versailles.  "  Sire,"  said  M.  de  Vardes  to  Louis  xiv., 
"  absence  from  Your  Majesty  makes  one  not  only  unhappy, 
but  also  ridiculous."  The  only  members  of  the  nobility  who 
were  left  in  the  country  were  those  who  were  too  poor  to  think 
of  going  to  Versailles  to  try  their  fortune.  The  finest  chateau 
in  a  pleasant  situation  was  considered  "  a  hideous  desert  "  ;  no 
one  was  to  be  seen  there  "  except  extraordinary  people  from 
the  small  towns,  or  rustics  from  the  villages."  Here  again  is  a 
strong  contrast  with  what  was  going  on  in  particularist  England. 
"  Exile,"  says  Arthur  Young,  "  is  the  only  thing  which  forces 
the  French  nobility  to  do  what  the  English  do  by  preference  :  to 
live  on  their  estates  in  order  to  beautify  them."  "  Every  man 
in  the  kingdom  who  owns  lands  of  any  considerable  extent," 


446     GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES 

says  the  Marquis  of  Mirabeau,  "is  at  Paris,  and  consequently 
his  houses  and  castles  are  neglected."  1  The  registers  of  the 
poll-tax  give  an  authentic  proof  of  this  fact :  the  poll-tax  was 
collected  at  the  actual  place  of  residence  ;  now,  this  tax  was 
entered  at  that  time  as  being  collected  from  all  the  greater 
nobility  and  a  part  of  the  smaller  at  Paris. 

We  know  what  brought  the  common  people  to  the  towns. 
Those  who  were  capable  of  making  their  way  up,  who,  in  spite  of 
hard  times,  had  been  able  to  make  some  small  profits,  hastened 
to  leave  the  country  where  well-to-do  peasants  hardly  stayed 
for  more  than  one  generation  ;  they  came  to  the  towns  to 
obtain  one  of  those  appointments  in  the  royal  or  municipal 
administration  which,  however  small  they  might  originally 
have  been,  had  by  degrees  had  some  exemptions  from  taxes 
attached  to  them.  For  everything  pivoted,  so  to  speak,  upon 
this  terrible  system  of  taxation  which  drained  the  resources  of 
the  country.  Those  who  had  lost  everything  went  to  the 
town  to  beg,  for  that  was  where  everyone  went  by  preference 
who  had  anything  to  give.  But  for  those  who  were  not  officials 
or  beggars  the  town  offered  no  better  refuge  than  the  country 
from  the  difficulties  of  life  :  the  burden  of  taxation  was  thrown 
back  as  much  as  possible  upon  the  artisan  and  the  merchant, 
as  it  was  elsewhere  on  the  peasant.  The  functionaries  and  men 
of  importance  among  the  burgesses  had  got  into  the  habit  of 
not  summoning  the  people,  and  met  by  themselves  to  discuss 
public  affairs,  and  tried  to  lay  upon  the  shoulders  of  others  the 
burden  of  taxation  that  weighed  upon  the  town  ;  they  usually 
levied  the  taxes  for  the  town  upon  articles  of  indispensable 
use,  of  which  the  people,  owing  to  their  larger  numbers,  used 
more,  and  of  which  a  rich  man  often  used  much  less,  because 
he  lived  on  other  things. 

Such  was  the  state  of  things  to  which  the  communistic 
system  of  monarchy  had  reduced  the  estates  that  were  formerly 
particularist ;  it  had  destroyed  their  independence,  prosperity, 
and  influence  in  a  very  large  degree. 

We  have  still  to  examine  the  condition  of  the  public  treasury, 
which  formed  the  basis  of  the  royal  government  and  absorbed 
all  the  country's  resources.  Figures  will  tell  the  story. 

"If,"    says    Taine,    "  Normandy,    Orleanais,  Soissonnais, 

1  Taine,  p.  58. 


ANCIEN  REGIME  AND  THE  REVOLUTION    447 

Champagne,  the  Isle  of  France,  Berry,  Poitou,  Auvergne, 
Lyonnais,  Gascony,  and  Upper  Guyenne,  are  put  together,  it 
will  be  found  that  out  of  100  francs  of  net  income,  direct  taxation 
alone  took  from  the  population  liable  to  the  land-tax  53  francs 
— that  is,  more  than  half."  x 

"  Towards  the  end  of  Louis  xv.'s  reign,"  says  Turgot,  "  in 
Limousin,  the  king  alone  drew  almost  as  much  from  the  land 
as  the  landowner.  There  was  a  certain  election,  that  of  Tulle, 
from  which  he  deducted  for  himself  56  per  cent,  of  the  produce." 

In  1757  the  taxes  amounted  to  £283,156,000.  In  1789  they 
amounted  to  £476,294,000. 

And,  owing  to  the  deplorable  social  mechanism  of  which 
we  have  noticed  the  final  results,  the  taxes  had  to  be  used 
periodically  to  resuscitate  agriculture,  which  they  had  exhausted. 
That  was  done  for  the  last  time  under  Louis  xvi.,  but  with  the 
usual  poor  results.  It  is  interesting  from  our  point  of  view 
to  follow  this  strange  operation ;  it  enables  us  to  grasp  the 
march  of  events  of  which  we  ought  to  know  the  social  causes. 

Towards  1780  it  was  thought  that  there  was  going  to  be 
a  revival  of  prosperity  in  the  kingdom.  The  governors-general 
had  received  orders  to  give  help  to  the  labouring  class.  Some 
of  them  began  to  direct  agriculture  and  industry,  to  repair 
the  roads,  which  had  become  useless  for  commerce.  They 
provided  the  peasants  with  seed,  taught  them  the  best  methods 
of  agricultural  labour,  ordered  them  to  pull  up  the  vines  from 
places  which  they  thought  unsuitable  either  because  of  the 
soil  or  the  climate,  and  to  replace  them  by  other  crops.  They 
took  no  end  of  trouble  in  other  similar  ways.  They  made 
beautiful  roads,  for  which  they  made  the  peasants  contribute 
forced  labour,  but  promised  that  this  time  it  should  be  paid 
at  the  same  rate  as  free  labour.  They  aimed,  above  all,  at 
making  a  beautiful  straight  line  of  roadway,  which  cut  through 
any  land  without  the  owners  being  expropriated  except  by  the 
governor's  decision,  and  without  their  being  previously  in- 
demnified, with  the  result  that  it  sometimes  happened  that 
they  were  not  paid  at  all. 

"  But  the  very  effort  the  Government  was  making  to  bring 
about  public  prosperity,  the  help,  the  encouragements  it  dis- 
tributed, the  public  works  it  caused  to  be  executed,  increased 

1  P.  461. 


448     GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES 

the  daily  expenditure  without  proportionately  increasing  the 
receipts  ;  and  this  daily  threw  the  king  into  greater  difficulties 
than  those  of  his  predecessors."  l 

So  a  system  of  increasing  loans  was  added  to  the  system 
of  increasing  taxation. 

"  And  as  there  was  no  possible  guarantee  for  the  loans 
except  taxation,  which  had  been  carried  to  its  furthest  limit, 
the  king  made  the  fatal  mistake  of  allowing  his  creditors  to 
suffer.  He  borrowed  from  all  sides,  privately  and  without 
competition,  and  his  creditors  were  never  sure  of  getting  their 
interest ;  even  their  capital  was  always  at  the  sole  mercy  of 
the  prince  and  his  sense  of  justice."  2 

The  triumph  of  the  public  treasury  over  the  private  domain 
is  complete.  The  result  seems  clear  enough. 

It  will  be  interesting  to  consider  in  whose  hands  was  the 
control  of  the  treasury.  On  that  side  too  it  had  developed 
strictly  in  accordance  with  its  own  law. 

At  the  beginning,  the  States-general,  which  was  composed 
of  clergy,  nobility,  and  burgesses,  intervened  in  the  management 
of  the  public  treasury,  at  any  rate  in  so  far  as  it  made  com- 
plaints and  gave  advice.  Subsequently,  that  care  was  left 
almost  exclusively  in  the  hands  of  the  burgesses  in  those 
assemblies,  and  finally  was  almost  limited  to  the  official  burgesses, 
as  the  merchants  hardly  figured  there  any  longer.  If  one 
goes  through  the  list  of  deputies  of  the  Commons  in  the  Assembly 
of  1614,  the  last  assembly  held  before  that  of  1789,  one  finds 
scarcely  anyone  there  but  men  of  law  and  men  connected 
with  the  treasury. 

Once  things  had  come  to  that  point,  it  was  much  simpler 
for  the  official  burgesses,  who  had  their  permanent  order  of 
rank,  to  make  their  observations  and  introduce  their  proposals 
with  regard  to  the  administration  and  to  the  management  of 
finance  at  their  periodical  professional  meetings.  As  the 
Parliament  of  Paris  was  the  supreme  court,  to  which  everything 
in  the  kingdom  was  referred  concerning  questions  of  justice, 
it  began,  as  was  natural,  to  take  the  place  of  the  States-general, 
which  was  greatly  inferior  inasmuch  as  it  was  only  an  inter- 
mittent institution  and  was  only  summoned  at  long  and  irregular 
intervals  :  as  soon  as  it  was  dissolved,  no  importance  was 
1  Tocqueville,  UAncien  Regime  et  la  Revolution,  p.  285.  2  Ibid, 


ANCIEN  REGIME  AND  THE  REVOLUTION    449 

attached  to  what  it  had  resolved  unless  it  was  the  king's  good 
pleasure. 

The  most  notable  step  taken  by  the  Parliament  in  the 
direction  I  have  just  mentioned,  was  to  intervene  in  regard 
to  royal  ordinances,  which  were  communicated  to  it  in  order 
to  be  registered  if  it  judged  that  they  ought  to  become  law. 
Before  proceeding  to  the  registration,  Parliament  drew  up,  if 
need  were,  certain  considerations  which  were  to  be  presented  to 
the  king,  recommending  the  edict  to  be  withdrawn  or  modified  : 
these  considerations  were  called  "  remonstrances."  It  tried 
to  exercise  this  power  by  all  sorts  of  lawful  means,  such  as 
dilatory  modes  of  procedure,  and  sometimes  by  unlawful 
methods,  by  peremptorily  refusing  to  enregister  the  decree  in 
spite  of  all  the  king's  commands.  Outside  Parliament,  revolts 
took  place  among  the  people,  and  even  among  the  lords  and 
princes.  They  were  particularly  noticeable  the  day  after  the 
dissolution  of  the  States -general  of  1614,  and  thirty  years 
later  during  the  Fronde.1  But  there  is  a  great  difference 
between  these  attempts  and  those  of  the  feudal  lords  to  check 
the  royal  omnipotence.  .  Parliament  had  nothing  to  support 
it  but  its  fine  doctrines  and  its  magisterial  offices  ;  it  was 
entirely  deprived  of  the  means  of  execution  which  the  Frankish 
domain  had  assured  to  the  feudatories ;  and  the  princes  or 
lords  at  court  could  not  collect  military  forces  except  by  appeal- 
ing to  popular  sentiment  or  to  foreigners,  who  might  co-operate 
from  considerations  of  self-interest.  But  such  methods  could 
not  be  relied  on,  as  events  soon  showed.  When  the  king  had 
a  clever  man  at  his  service,  who  was  prompt  to  make  the  most 
of  what  resources  his  treasury  supplied,  he  was  still  the  better 
equipped  of  the  two  adversaries. 

Richelieu  was  the  man  who  presented  himself  for  this  service. 
We  cannot  praise  his  work  unless  we  lay  down  as  a  principle 
that  absolute  monarchy  is  desirable  :  and  that  is  the  contrary 
of  what  is  proved  by  the  facts.  We  need  not  go  into  the 
question  of  Richelieu's  genius  or  of  Louis  xm.'s  honesty,  but  we 
cannot  overlook  their  colossal  mistake  when  we  know  the  evil 
which  resulted  from  it  in  France .  Their  responsibility,  however, 
is,  in  the  judgment  of  history,  very  much  lightened  by  the  fact 
that  the  movement  which  they  carried  to  its  farthest  limit  was 

1  Augnstin  Thierry,  Histoire  du  Tiers  fitat,  chap.  viii. 
29 


450     GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES 

more  than  three-quarters  accomplished  before  their  time.  And 
there  is  a  further  motive  why  a  great  deal  should  be  deducted 
from  their  responsibility:  like  all  those  who  finish  the  work  begun 
by  predecessors,  they  reaped  the  honour,  if  honour  it  can  be 
called,  from  many  things  which  had  been  already  accomplished. 

"  Richelieu,"  says  Augustin  Thierry,  who  is  one  of  his 
eulogists,  "  before  executing  his  political  schemes,  wished  to 
submit  them  to  the  trial  of  a  solemn  debate,  in  order  that  they 
might  be  supported  by  a  kind  of  national  confirmation.  He 
could  not  dream  of  submitting  them  to  the  States-general ;  he 
was  a  member  of  the  Assembly  of  1614,  he  had  seen  it  at  work, 
and  moreover,  his  absolute  genius  was  averse  to  those  large 
assemblies  ;  he  sought  the  moral  support  he  desired  in  an 
assembly  of  notables.  In  November  1626  he  convoked  fifty-five 
persons  of  his  own  choice  :  twelve  representatives  of  the  clergy, 
fourteen  of  the  nobility,  twenty-seven  of  the  supreme  courts, 
with  a  Treasurer  of  France  and  the  Provost  of  the  Merchants 
of  Paris.  Gaston,  the  king's  brother,  was  president,  and 
Marshals  La  Force  and  Bassompiere  were  vice-presidents  of 
the  Assembly.  But  the  nobles  who  took  part  in  it,  mainly 
state  councillors,  belonged  to  the  Government  rather  than  to 
the  court ;  not  a  single  duke  or  peer  was  there,  nor  a  single 
provincial  governor."  * 

Thus,  after  the  States-general  came  the  Parliament ;  after 
the  Parliament,  an  occasional  assembly  of  fifty-five  notables, 
carefully  selected  :  it  was  a  process  of  gradual  but  steady 
diminution  of  control. 

It  is  easy  to  see  for  what  limited  purpose  the  Assembly  of 
Notables  had  been  formed  :  it  was  merely  wanted  to  give 
its  approval  of  Richelieu's  views,  in  order  to  hide  their 
illegality  and  arbitrariness,  and  then  it  had  to  disappear 
immediately.  The  first  sitting  was  held  on  December  2, 
1626,  in  the  great  hall  of  the  Tuileries,  and  before  three  months 
were  over  the  assembly  was  dissolved,  on  February  24,  1627. 

When  it  was  gone,  nothing  remained  but  the  Prime  Minister. 
The  Prime  Minister  then  became  the  sole  official  to  give  counsel 
as  to  the  management  of  the  power,  which  by  directing  every- 
thing in  France  paralysed  all  initiative,  even  in  the  most  funda- 
mental affairs  of  life.  The  mass  of  the  people  achieved  nothing  : 

1  Histoire  du  Tiers  £tat,  p.  169. 


ANCIEN  REGIME  AND  THE  REVOLUTION    451 

before  long  there  was  only  one  active  individuality  in  France, 
all  the  others  were  passive. 

But  the  personage  who  was  thus  placed  between  the  king 
and  the  country  was  also  a  superfluity  and  an  anomaly  in  a 
system  where  everything  depended  on  the  will  of  the  king  : 
he  was,  as  it  were,  a  proxy  who  intervened  between  his  prin- 
cipal and  his  business  ;  he  ran  the  risk  of  being  a  serious  incon- 
venience to  his  employer. 

There  were  only  two  Prime  Ministers  of  that  sort :  Richelieu 
and  Mazarin.  The  need  for  them  soon  came  to  an  end. 

The  king  declared,  as  everyone  knows,  that  henceforth  he 
would  have  no  prime  minister  but  himself.  Louis  xiv.  merely 
summed  up  very  neatly  what  was  the  result  of  shrewd  observa- 
tion when  he  said,  "What  is  the  State  ?  I  am  it"  (" L'etat, 
tfest  moi  ").  Thus  the  king  represented  everything  in  France, 
not  only  in  the  reality  of  facts,  but  actually  in  the  official  forms  : 
he  managed  the  finances  entirely  alone,  as  well  as  the  matters 
to  which  the  public  money  was  supposed  to  be  devoted — that 
is  to  say,  as  far  as  he  possibly  could. 

How  did  he  organise  that  management  which  had  become 
more  personal  and  at  the  same  time  more  universal  than  ever  ? 

For  the  actual  work  he  turned  his  auxiliaries  into  subor- 
dinates of  a  kind,  however  capable  they  might  be,  like  Colbert 
and  Louvois.  In  the  distant  provinces  he  used  the  governors 
mercilessly  to  execute  his  wishes  ;  they  were  his  agents  for 
doing  everything,  and  were  few  in  number  and  omnipotent 
in  their  own  dominions.  Like  the  Merovingian  count,  the 
governor  was  expected  to  conduct  (that  was  the  word)  the 
courts  of  law,  the  police,  the  militia,  and  the  finances.  He 
had  subalterns  who  were  set  over  the  different  divisions  of  the 
district  under  his  control,  and  who,  under  a  variety  of  names, 
according  to  the  part  of  the  country  where  they  worked,  among 
others  sub-delegates,  performed  the  part  of  mere  instruments. 
In  the  towns  it  very  often  happened  that  the  governor  made 
alterations  in  the  staff,  and  even  in  the  organisation  of  the 
local  administration  ;  he  reformed  the  municipal  constitution 
at  will ;  it  was  almost  as  if  he  granted  or  repealed  local 
charters  according  to  the  needs  of  his  government.1  In  the 
rural  districts  there  were  two  agents — the  tax-gatherer  and 

1  See  Tocqueville,  ISAncien  Regime  et  la  Revolution,  p.  379  among  others. 


452  GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES 

the  magistrate — both  chosen  from  the  inhabitants.  The 
tax-gatherer  was  personally  responsible  for  the  incoming  of 
the  taxes  ;  he  had  to  divide  among  the  inhabitants  according 
to  his  own  calculations  the  total  amount  of  the  taxes  of  the 
district,  and  to  enforce  the  payment  of  them.  There  can  be 
no  doubt  that  the  actions  of  a  man  intrusted  with  this  office, 
who  appeared  to  be  acting  merely  as  an  inhabitant,  must  have 
been  considered  arbitrary,  hateful,  and  baneful :  arbitrary, 
because  he  burdened  whom  he  liked  with  taxes ;  hateful,  because 
he  used  violent  means  ;  baneful,  because  he  was  responsible  to 
the  sub-delegate  and  the  governor  for  what  was  not  paid. 
He  represented  the  curials  of  the  Roman  imperial  system  of 
government.  As  for  the  magistrate,  he  performed  the  office 
of  mayor — that  is  to  say,  of  agent  for  the  transmission  of  all 
the  orders  from  the  governor  to  the  district.  If  the  governor 
were  not  satisfied  with  their  execution,  he  did  not  hesitate  to 
imprison  the  magistrate  without  any  legal  proceedings.1 

Now  that  we  are  acquainted  with  the  public  treasury 
through  its  executive  staff,  let  us  proceed  to  get  some  know- 
ledge of  its  methods  of  employment. 

What  it  aimed  at  was  to  win  over  to  the  support  of  the  king, 
by  means  of  the  funds  of  the  treasury,  all  the  people  whom  it 
was  diplomatic  to  win,  all  who  might  be  of  some  value  from 
that  point  of  view.  It  is  impossible  to  pension  everyone  ; 
there  is  a  shorter  and  less  costly  way — namely,  to  exempt  people 
from  paying  money  into  the  treasury  :  to  work  on  a  system  of 
privileges  or  exemption  from  taxes.  The  exemptions  go  on 
increasing  indefinitely  :  they  serve  as  an  excellent  means  of 
creating  functionaries  who  have  relatively  little  pay,  through 
whom  the  Government  may  keep  in  touch  with  everything, 
and  claim  to  provide  for  everything  in  detail.  Posts  are  dis- 
tributed on  all  sides,  the  salaries  of  which  consist  in  the  privilege 
of  paying  nothing.  By  this  means  everyone  is  eager  to  be 
an  official,  and  hold  office  under  the  king,  for  the  too  obvious 
advantage  of  escaping  the  terrible  taxes  on  one  side  at  any- 
rate. 

But  we  shall  now  see  the  sad  result  of  this  contrivance  : 

1.  The  privileged  persons  are  multiplied  to  such  an  extent 
that  everyone  jostles  them  and  takes  their  measure,  asking 

1  See  Tocqueville  and  Taine,  passim. 


ANCIEN  REGIME  AND  THE  REVOLUTION    453 

what  good  right  they  have  to  be  exempted  from  the  very 
heavy  burden  that  those  beside  them  carry ; 

2.  The  weight  of  taxation  is  thrown  more  heavily  upon 
the  others,  upon  people  who  are  in  inferior  positions  and 
consequently  have  less  opportunity  and  skill  for  making 
money. 

That  gives  rise  to  the  terrible  ruin  of  the  peasants  and  the 
small  artisans  which  we  have  mentioned.  It  is  the  cause  of 
the  hatred  with  which  these  hard-worked  people  look  upon 
those  who  are  not  exploited  like  themselves,  and  whom  they 
consider,  not  without  some  reason,  as  the  actual  exploiters, 
because  they  do  not  hesitate  to  throw  the  whole  weight  of 
taxation  upon  them  by  continuing  to  get  exemptions.  It 
explains  why  the  system  of  privileges  became  an  abomination 
when  it  spread  so  enormously,  and  it  is  a  phenomenon  that 
belongs  to  the  latter  times  of  the  great  monarchy,  not  to  the 
period  and  institutions  of  triumphant  feudalism.  It  further 
explains  why  the  popular  dislike  was  directed  against  those 
whom  the  king  did  not  oblige  to  pay  taxes,  rather  than  against 
the  king  himself,  who  seemed  thus  to  treat  them  with  honour 
and  liberality. 

The  whole  meaning  of  the  revolt  that  has  been  called  the 
Revolution  lies  therein. 

And  it  is  clear,  too,  how  much  the  revolt  was  the  natural 
outcome  of  the  restoration  of  the  ancient  government  of  kings 
in  France. 

It  must  also  be  observed  that  it  was  as  easy  to 
accomplish  the  revolt  as  to  conceive  the  idea  of  it.  For,  in 
that  public  community  in  which  there  was  simply  the  king 
on  the  one  side  and  private  individuals  on  the  other,Mio 
spontaneous  resistance  could  be  made  to  check  the  rising, 
since  the  bonds  which  might  have  directly  united  private 
men  together,  in  however  small  a  sphere,  were  broken.  So  the 
rebels  had  no  difficulty  in  laying  hands  on  the  king's  person  and 
after  that  on  anyone  else  they  pleased.  "  What,"  exclaimed 
Burke,  on  watching  the  events  of  the  Revolution  shape  them- 
selves, "  is  there  not  a  single  man  who  can  answer  for  the 
smallest  district  ?  Nay  rather,  there  does  not  seem  to  be  one 
man  who  can  answer  for  another  !  Everyone  is  arrested  in 
his  own  house  without  resistance  whether  he  is  a  royalist,  a 


454  GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES 

moderate,  or  anything  else."  1  Even  the  army  was  as  little 
united  as  the  country  and  made  as  little  spontaneous  resist- 
ance. It  had  no  common  centre  for  action  any  more  than 
had  the  people  at  large.2  So  it  came  about  that  when  a  well- 
marked  opportunity  arrived,  when  the  convocation  of  the 
States-general  took  place  just- at  the  time  when  a  famine  was 
threatening,  the  dregs  of  the  people  revolted,  and  no  one 
checked  them,  and  the  rebellion  went  through  all  the  phases 
with  which  we  are  familiar  and  which  are  explained  by  all 
that  we  have  just  said. 

If,  however,  the  Revolution  had  been  nothing  but  the 
rising  of  the  people  headed  by  the  mob,  when  once  their  first 
passion  had  expended  itself  they  would  have  come  to  some 
agreement,  as  is  the  case  in  hundreds  of  revolts  of  that  kind. 
But  when  the  people  who  were  capable  of  making  some  kind 
of  settlement  followed  the  disorderly  mob,  the  evil  caused  by 
the  social  organisation  of  France  was  revealed  to  its  full  extent. 
The  French,  from  the  foremost  men  to  the  last,  from  the  men 
of  genius  to  the  mass  of  the  people,  were  incapable  of  conceiving 
of  society  in  any  other  way  than  as  a  communal  society.  They 
thought  that  the  whole  root  of  the  evil  was  the  mismanagement 
of  the  community :  no  one  realised  that  management  is  im- 
possible in  a  community  of  such  proportions,  which  claims  to 
deal  with  everything.  And  instead  of  despatching  everyone  to 
manage  his  own  affairs  in  freedom,  and  associate  himself  with 
others  as  far  as  necessity  truly  demands  it ;  instead  of  in 
consequence  reducing  the  duties  of  the  State  to  the  direction 
of  such  things  as  are  of  public  necessity  and  cannot  be  done 
by  private  persons,  people  continued  to  think  that  there  could 
be  no  society  except  through  the  State,  that  society  and  the 
State  were  one  and  the  same  thing.  And  the  worst  of  it  was 
that  this  communal  and  essentially  centralising  organisation 
became  an  ideal  conception,  a  rational  doctrine,  an  absolute 
duty,  instead  of  being  the  result  of  a  simple  evolution,  a  state 
of  things  created  by  regrettable  circumstances.  Then,  the 
more  reforms  were  needed,  the  more  did  people  put  faith  in 
combination,  and  in  the  application  of  the  communal  system, 
and  in  the  absolute  mastership  of  the  State.  There  was  not 
a  man  of  sense  who  did  not  wreck  his  best  intentions  on  that 

1  See  Tocqueville,  p.  328.  2  See  Taine,  Ancien  Regime,  p.  611. 


ANCIEN  REGIME  AND  THE  REVOLUTION    455 

false  rock,  always  imagining  that  a  detestable  machine  would 
work  best.  And  there  was  no  fool  who  did  not  attempt 
to  cry  up  his  projects  by  showing  that  they  were  deduced 
from  the  idea  of  a  general  community,  a  universally 
accepted  idea.  All  Rousseau's  influence  was  founded  on 
that  idea,  all  the  success  of  the  Contrat  Social  depended  on 
it.  Consider  in  turn  the  constitutions  which  have  exhausted 
France  since  1789,  consider  the  schemes  of  reform  that  have 
been  advanced  one  after  the  other,  they  are  all  based  on 
the  same  system — namely,  that  individuals  go  to  make  up 
society,  and  society  must  take  charge  of  them. 

The  idea  was  applied  in  the  most  curious  way  in  the  re- 
volutionary constitution.  People  attempted  to  decentralise 
the  power,  but  did  so  on  communistic  lines.  They  made  as 
many  communities  as  there  were  municipalities.  These  munici- 
palities were  independent  of  each  other,  and  each  managed 
the  affairs  of  all  its  own  members.  They  were  only  connected 
together  in  so  far  as  they  had  superior  elective  leaders,  whose 
duty  it  was  to  point  out  what  was  necessary  to  be  done,  but 
who  had  no  power  to  force  them  to  put  the  measures  they 
drew  up  in  common  into  execution.  That  was  the  Federation. 
Now,  in  each  municipality  of  this  kind  the  private  and  public 
welfare  was  in  the  hands  of  a  general  assembly  of  the  inhabitants; 
so  each  inhabitant  had  to  be  constantly  on  his  feet  in  order 
to  go  and  take  his  share  in  the  management  of  the  affairs  of 
the  commune  and  of  each  individual.  There  were  so  many 
meetings,  so  much  voting,  so  many  public  functions  to  be 
attended,  that  everyone,  taking  it  all  round,  spent  what 
amounted  to  two  days  in  the  week  over  them.  Would  it  not 
have  been  simpler,  and  produced  infinitely  better  results  in 
society,  to  let  everyone  devote  those  two  days  directly  to  his 
personal  affairs,  with  the  free  help  of  those  who  could  naturally 
help  him  the  best  ?  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  turned  out  that  only 
a  very  small  number  found  it  congenial  to  busy  themselves 
about  the  welfare  of  everyone,  and,  needless  to  say,  they  were 
the  least  hard-working  and  the  least  capable.  They  formed 
the  active  part  of  the  community  and  conducted  affairs  :  they 
were  the  politicians. 

Clubs  and  political  parties  were  formed  among  these  poli- 
ticians between  town  and  town,  village  and  village,  for  the 


456  GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES 

purpose  of  using  power  in  one  direction  or  another  all  over 
the  country  ;  and  of  these  parties  the  Jacobins  were  the  most 
marked,  because  they  were  the  warmest  supporters  of  the 
doctrine  of  absolute  communism,  according  to  which  the 
community  was  provided  with  unlimited  power  over  every- 
thing in  defiance  of  everything.. 

Since  the  Revolution,  since  the  idea  that  the  State 
should  enter  into  every  question  regarding  every  individual 
has  theoretically  become  the  ne  plus  ultra  of  the  social 
constitution  for  all  countries  and  all  time,  France  has  continued 
to  incline  towards  communism  on  principle,  and  has  applied 
it  to  cases  outside  those  which  needed  it ;  and  she  has  done  so, 
not  as  being  compelled  any  longer  by  all-powerful  masters,  as 
was  the  case  under  the  kings,  but  as  being  convinced  that  she 
is  travelling  towards  a  perfection,  which  she  is  sure  to  reach 
in  due  course,  towards  progress  and  a  better  future. 

When  errors  of  doctrine  are  added  to  errors  of  fact,  it  is 
impossible  to  travel  anywhere  but  in  a  totally  wrong  direction 
with  a  fatally  misguided  energy. 

That,  then,  was  the  way  in  which  the  Revolution  carried 
on  and  strengthened  the  form  of  government  which  the  French 
monarchy  had  used. 

The  series  of  Governments  since  1789  have  worked  on 
better  lines  than  the  previous  Government,  but  their  notions 
have  all  been  distorted  by  the  fundamental  communistic  idea, 
so  much  so  that  the  modern  reforms  all  bear  the  marks  of  it. 


CHAPTEK  XXVIII 

THE  LAST  OF  THE  GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES 
AND  THE  GREAT  PARTICULARIST  NATIONS  OF  THE 
PRESENT  DAY :  THE  GERMAN  EMPIRE,  THE  ENGLISH 
PEOPLE 

IN   speaking   of  the  formation  of  Germany,  we  explained 
how  the  central    region    of    Europe  passed  through   the 
same  social  evolutions  as  France  l  a  few  centuries  later. 

In  1438,  Albert  n.,  Emperor  of  Germany,  who  by  his 
marriage  had  united  Hungary  and  Bohemia  to  the  already 
considerable  possessions  of  the  house  of  Austria,  considered 
himself  powerful  enough  to  establish  the  imperial  title  in  his 
family.  From  that  time  forward  there  was  nothing  to  prevent 
that  supreme  power,  the  idea  of  which  had  been  borrowed 
from  the  communal  system  of  antiquity,  from  still  further 
increasing  by  the  employment  of  force  and  a  coherent  policy. 
That  event  in  Germany  corresponded  to  what  occurred  in 
France  in  1214,  when  Philip  Augustus  annexed  to  his  own 
dominion  of  the  Isle  of  France  and  Orleanais,  Boulonnais,  Artois, 
Amie'nois,  Vermandois,  Valois,  Normandy,  Maine,  Touraine, 
Anjou,  and  Poitou,  and  was  the  first  of  the  Capetians  to 
put  an  end  to  the  custom  of  electing  the  successor  to  the 
throne. 

|The  house  of  Austria,  in  spite  of  the  efforts  it  made  to 
absorb  everything  and  bring  unity  to  Germany,  was  not  as 
successful  as  the  Capetians  in  France.  It  found  that  these 
very  Capetians  were  the  main  obstacle  in  its  progress.  The 
great  French  monarchy,  which  had  attained  to  domination  and 
unity  at  an  earlier  date,  feared  the  rise  of  another  state  like 
herself,  and  did  all  in  her  power  to  oppose  the  work  of  absorp- 
tion upon  which  the  house  of  Austria  had  embarked. 
1  See  above,  Chap.  XXII.  p.  343. 

457 


458  GREAT  EUROPEAN  MONARCHIES 

Owing  to  her  intervention,  Germany  remained  broken  up 
into  a  fairly  large  number  of  states,  the  heads  of  which  were 
able  to  try  their  hand  at  a  centralised  monarchic  government 
on  the  lines  adopted  by  Spain,  France,  and  Austria  in  turn. 
So  it  came  about  that  instead  of  forming  a  single  united  king- 
dom, Germany  was  composed  of  a  great  Austrian  monarchy 
and  of  a  number  of  small  monarchies  which  were  likewise 
modelled  on  the  urban  and  communal  type. 

We  already  know  that  the  dominant  and  characteristic 
means  of  control  employed  by  a  society  of  that  type  are  a 
treasury  and  military  troops. 

We  shall  find  this  fact  confirmed  in  a  striking  manner  by  a 
rapid  sketch  of  the  growth  of  Prussia,  which  in  the  eighteenth 
century  succeeded  in  forming  a  counterpoise  to  Austria  of  a 
more  formidable  kind  than  France  had  been,  and  which  in  the 
following  century  prevailed  against  both  those  powers  at  once, 
and  created  a  new  great  monarchy,  the  German  Empire  of  the 
present  day. 

The  Prussian  monarchy  owed  its  formation  to  the  Hohen- 
zollerns  still  more  than  the  French  monarchy  did  to  the 
Capetians.  It  began  with  the  purchase  of  the  March  of  Branden- 
burg, which  corresponded  in  the  north  to  the  March  of  Austria 
in  the  south.  It  was  part  of  the  inheritance  of  the  Emperor 
Sigismond,  and  was  purchased  by  the  Burgrave  of  Nuremburg, 
Frederick  of  Hohenzollern,  for  the  sum  of  400,000  ducats,  of 
which  the  emperor  was  in  need.  This  Frederick  made  such 
good  use  of  his  rights  as  Burgrave  over  Nuremburg,  and  of  the 
resources  of  a  few  modest  states  he  had  in  his  possession,  that 
he  succeeded  in  making  a  large  fortune,  a  phenomenon  that 
was  rare  in  those  days. 

As  we  explained  previously  with  regard  to  the  new  Ger- 
manisation  of  Central  Europe  in  the  Middle  Ages,  the  March 
of  Brandenburg  was  a  Wend — that  is,  a  Slav  country — with 
strong  castles  belonging  to  German  knights  of  the  regular  old 
type,  and  with  walled  towns  filled  with  artisans  or  German 
merchants.  These  two  adventitious  classes  lived  on  the  labour 
of  the  Slav  population,  whom  they  had  not  merely  left  but 
forcibly  driven  to  work  the  land,  which  they  did  in  the  manner 
usual  to  communal  families. 

To  the  east  of  the  March  of  Brandenburg  there  stretched 


THE  GERMAN  EMPIRE  459 

away  to  the  far  distance  a  country  which  was  gradually  formed 
bya  a  combination  of  these  same  elements,  in  proportion  as 
knights  and  merchants  made  their  way  into  the  Slav  territory. 

A  country  with  that  kind  of  social  organisation  was  very 
suitable  for  the  establishment  of  a  power  of  the  communal  type. 

It  was  all  the  more  so  because  the  knights  who  had  made 
the  most  extensive  conquests  belonged  to  the  military  orders, 
the  Teutonic  Order,  and  the  Order  of  the  Lance-bearers,  so 
that  they  were  themselves  members  of  a  communistic  organisa- 
tion, and  were  more  military  and  more  used  to  administration 
than  the  knights  who  remained  independent  landowners. 

When  the  Burgrave,  Frederick  of  Hohenzollern,  came  to 
the  state  he  had  purchased,  there  were  some  signs  of  mutiny 
among  the  squires  of  the  strongholds  and  the  townsfolk  of 
the  walled  cities.  "  They  received  him,  it  is  said,  with  the 
famous  jest :  '  Were  it  to  rain  burgraves  for  a  whole  year, 
we  should  not  allow  them  to  grow  in  the  March.5  But  the 
new  elector's  money  and  his  mercenaries,  and  his  Nuremburg 
jewels,  as  his  canons  were  scoffingly  called,  ended  by  over- 
coming all  local  opposition."  l  This  is  another  illustration  of 
power  based  upon  the  possession  of  a  treasury  and  military 
forces. 

Therein  lies  the  secret  of  the  whole  history  of  Prussia.  We 
are  sufficiently  acquainted  with  the  Prussia  of  Frederick  the 
Great  and  of  the  Emperor  William  i.  to  know  that  it  owed 
everything  to  a  powerful  military  organisation,  supported  by 
a  treasury  that  was  managed  with  a  care  worthy  of  the  best 
housewife.  The  voting  for  the  "  Septennat " — that  is  to  say, 
for  the  war-tax  for  seven  years — Prince  Bismarck's  last  victory 
over  modern  Germany,  is  a  further  proof  that  the  two  funda- 
mental agents  of  that  great  monarchy,  as  of  all  others,  are  the 
treasury  and  the  army. 

Prussia  furnishes  a  no  less  striking  confirmation  of  the 
fact  we  pointed  out  before,  that  there  are  very  great  similarities 
between  the  system  of  government  of  the  great  monarchies 
and  that  of  the  Revolution. 

Frederick  the  Great  was,  as  we  know,  an  ardent  disciple 
and  champion  of  the  so-called  philosophic  school  which  gave 
the  best  expression  to  the  doctrinal  error  of  the  French  Revolu- 

1  Himly,  Formation  tenitoride  de  V Europe  centrale,  vol.  ii.  pp.  11,  12. 


460          GREAT  PARTICULARIST  NATIONS 

tion.  He  found  no  difficulty  in  introducing  the  whole  theory 
of  the  Contrat  Social  into  a  code  which  he  himself  drew  up  for 
Prussia,  a  kind  of  complete  hand-book  of  legislation,  embracing 
the  principles  of  public  power  and  the  provisions  of  civil  and 
penal  law.  Now  this  code  is  a  perfect  instrument  of  autocratic 
government.  The  explanation  of  it  is  very  simple  :  the  State 
is  looked  upon  as  being  society,  and  the  king  is  the  expression 
of  the  State  ;  it  follows  that  the  king  is  the  universal  agent  of 
society.  So  it  is  all  the  result  of  confounding  society  with  the 
State,  and  the  State  with  him  who  controls  it.  In  the  introduc- 
tion to  the  code  in  question  are  the  following  words  :  "  The  head 
of  the  State,  to  whom  is  intrusted  the  duty  of  securing  public 
welfare,  which  is  the  sole  aim  of  society,  is  authorised  to  direct  and 
control  all  the  actions  of  individuals  towards  this  end"  That  is 
as  worthy  of  Louis  xiv.  as  of  Jean-Jacques  Rousseau.  There 
is  another  statement  in  the  same  code,  which,  unless  it  is  made 
with  great  reservations,  seems  to  extol  a  terribly  communistic 
method  of  solution  for  questions  which  are  now  absorbing 
Germany  even  more  than  before  :  "  It  is  incumbent  upon  the 
State  to  see  to  the  feeding,  employment,  and  payment  of  all 
those  who  cannot  (?)  support  themselves,  and  who  have 
no  claim  to  the  help  of  the  lord  of  the  manor,  or  to  the 
help  of  the  commune  :  it  is  necessary  to  provide  such  persons 
with  work  which  is  suitable  to  their  strength  and  their 
capacity."  1 

Alexis  de  Tocqueville  makes  a  remark  concerning  this  pro- 
duction of  Frederick's  which  is  an  excellent  confirmation  of  the 
resemblances  we  pointed  out  between  the  "  Ancien  Regime  " 
and  the  Revolution  :  "  The  proof,"  he  says,  "  that  this  code, 
which  introduced  so  many  apparent  innovations  (in  the  termin- 
ology and  phraseology  of  the  then  new  school  of  philosophers), 
in  reality  made  very  few  innovations,  and  what  makes  it  in 
consequence  so  interesting  to  anyone  who  is  trying  to  get  a 
better  idea  of  the  true  state  of  society  in  that  part  of  Germany 
at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  is  that  the  Prussian 
nation  appeared  scarcely  to  notice  its  publication." 

We  have  now  seen  enough  of  the  sad  state  into  which 
those  countries  fell  which  the  Franks  had  filled  with  their 
energy — that  is  to  say,  France  and  Germany — when  theparticu- 

1  Tocqueville,  L' Ancien  Regime  et  la  Revolution,  p.  366. 


THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE  461 

larist  elements  were  swamped  by  the  development  of  an  extra- 
ordinary combination  of  subsisting  communal  elements. 

It  is  time  for  us  to  look  at  the  more  cheerful  spectacle 
presented  by  England,  where  the  particularist  form  of  society 
did  not  encounter  the  same  condition  of  things. 

We  know  from  our  previous  studies  that  the  fundamental 
reason  of  that  difference  was  that,  in  the  beginning,  the  Saxon 
emigrants  in  Great  Britain  were  able  to  develop  a  rich  soil 
in  comfort  without  mingling  with  a  communal  population, 
which  might  have  led  to  the  formation  of  a  Romano-barbarian 
system  of  government. 

We  have  become  so  degenerate  by  our  return  to  the  ancient 
communal  society  that  we  have  to  make  a  mental  effort  in  order 
to  realise  the  vigorous  action  and  pre-established  harmony 
that  are  found  in  a  nation  in  which  the  aim  of  every  individual 
is  to  achieve  an  independence  based  on  the  power  to  form  an 
estate,  and  to  rely  on  the  fewest  possible  personal  bonds,  even 
though  they  be  voluntary  ;  but  one  can  understand  that  a  race 
that  has  made  trial  of  these  conditions  for  some  generations 
and  has  thought  and  acted  on  these  lines  would  not  renounce 
that  manner  of  life  any  more  than  it  would  renounce  inventions 
of  unquestioned  utility,  such  as  the  wheel  and  the  lever.  So 
we  found  that  the  Saxons  of  England,  from  their  collision  with 
the  Angles  till  their  encounter  with  the  Normans,  did  not 
abandon  their  isolated  way  of  living,  and  kept  their  original 
constitution,  which  enabled  them  to  go  through  every  imagin- 
able crisis. 

We  stopped  at  that  point  in  their  history  where  the  Norman 
lords  in  England  had  decided  to  make  the  Saxon  people  their 
allies  against  the  king,  after  having  previously  allied  them- 
selves with  the  king  against  the  Saxon  race  and  relied  on  their 
feudal  cohesion. 

There  is  nothing  extraordinary  in  this  change.  William 
the  Conqueror's  expedition  was  not  an  agricultural  colonisation 
but  a  military  occupation,  only  it  was  better  planned  than  that 
of  the  Danes,  thanks  to  the  excellent  organisation  of  feudalism. 
It  was  therefore  quite  natural  that  the  invaders  should  base 
their  strength  on  their  cohesion  amongst  themselves  and  on 
the  cohesion  between  themselves  and  the  king.  But,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  there  was  no  cohesion  between  them  except 


462          GREAT  PARTICULARIST  NATIONS 

in  so  far  as  the  king  was  their  intermediary,  just  as  there  is 
none  between  the  men  of  a  company  except  through  the  captain. 
William  had  made  each  of  the  60,000  vassals  whom  he  set  up 
in  England  directly  dependent  upon  himself.  He  had  not 
created  any  great  feudatories  with  subordinate  hierarchies 
of  vassals  who  were  not  bound  to  the  king  except  in  so  far 
as  they  were  bound  to  his  feudatories.  His  chosen  comrades, 
whom  he  wished  to  reward  more  richly  than  the  rest,  had  merely 
received  grants  of  larger  dues  or  rents  to  be  gathered  from  the 
estates  of  the  Saxons,  and  a  higher  title  of  honour  :  they  were 
made  counts  instead  of  plain  knights.  Furthermore,  the 
larger  grants  were  not  the  proceeds  of  a  number  of  contiguous 
estates,  but  of  different  domains,  situated  in  different  parts 
of  the  kingdom.  And  the  title  of  count  did  not  imply  any 
administrative  or  military  power  even  over  the  place  from 
which  he  derived  his  title :  it  was  merely  a  mark  of  honour. 
William  made  only  two  or  three  exceptions  to  this  rule,  but 
even  in  those  cases  he  did  not  allow  the  power  to  be 
handed  on,  and  no  result  of  importance  followed,  because 
the  king  was  careful  not  to  give  up  any  of  his  power.  Even 
when  a  count  received  from  an  estate,  apart  from  the  rents, 
the  benefit  of  a  part  of  the  profits  derived  from  lawsuits,  neither 
he  nor  his  representatives  had  the  right  to  judge  cases. 

All  the  administrative,  military,  and  judicial  functions  were 
performed  in  the  king's  name  by  sheriffs,  who  were  appointed  to 
sections  of  the  country  called  shires  (probably  the  same  thing 
as  share,  part,  portion  :  these  divisions  are  also  called  counties). 
It  was  an  essential  characteristic  of  the  royal  agent  that  he 
was  liable  to  dismissal :  he  was  often  recalled  and  deprived  of 
his  office  for  very  small  offences,  and  always  kept  under  a  tight 
hand  and  watched  narrowly.  He  also  bore  the  title  of  viscount, 
but  he  had  no  connection  with  the  count.  It  was  a  rule  that 
no  count  should  be  made  sheriff  in  the  shire  which  gave  him 
his  title  or  where  he  held  lands  of  any  considerable  extent. 

It  is  therefore  sufficiently  clear  that  the  Norman  lords  in 
England,  in  spite  of  their  feudal  titles  of  counts  or  knighted 
barons,  had  no  political  connection  directly  with  the  country 
or  between  themselves.  They  were  only  united  through  the 
king. 

So  it  was  not  difficult  for  the^king  to  dominate^them,  for 


THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE  463 

even  if  any  of  them  showed  an  inclination  to  resist  his  will,  the 
rebel  had  no  following  to  support  him,  and  was  soon  forced  to 
give  in  :  his  property  was  taken  and  given  to  someone  else, 
which  meant  that  there  was  always  "  someone  else  "  ready 
and  willing  to  help  the  king  on  such  an  occasion. 

Now  it  is  extremely  easy  to  see  why  the  lords,  with  this 
entire  absence  of  any  direct  organisation  amongst  themselves, 
felt  that  they  were  in  a  perilous  position,  uncertain  of  the  issue 
of  the  struggle,  when  by  a  spontaneous  movement  they  rose 
en  masse  against  John  and  his  successors,  who  attempted  to 
tax  the  incomes  of  the  lords  to  excess,  and  had  favourites 
from  Anjou  and  Poitou,  who  were  quite  ready  to  step  into  the 
places  of  the  Normans  when  they  had  helped  to  evict  them. 
It  was  then  that  the  lords  felt  it  necessary  to  rely  upon  the 
Saxon  race,  the  power  of  whose  combination  and  tenacity  in 
action  they  had  experienced  on  so  many  occasions.  Their 
staff  of  officers  was  already  furnished  by  the  Saxons,  which 
did  away  with  the  necessity  of  choosing  officers  among  them- 
selves,— and  an  endless  task  it  would  have  been,  because  they 
would  have  had  to  begin  at  the  very  beginning,  and  their  ranks 
would  inevitably  have  been  ruined  and  divided  by  rivalries. 
From  that  time  forward  the  lords  were  hedged  about,  supported 
and  swept  onward  by  the  natural  organisation  of  the  Saxon 
race.  Once  more  the  Saxons  reassumed  the  direction  of  their 
own  destinies.  They  were,  so  to  speak,  the  current  which 
carries  away  the  boat,  and  makes  it  follow  the  stream  in  spite 
of  the  efforts  at  resistance  made  by  the  oarsmen. 

When  the  Normans  made  advances  of  friendship  towards 
the  Saxons  upon  finding  that  the  rupture  between  the  English 
feudal  system  and  the  king  made  their  position  somewhat 
precarious,  a  number  of  lords  decided  that  it  would  be  better 
for  them  to  quit  their  idle  life  of  warfare,  which  was  costly, 
and  take  to  the  active  life  of  agriculture  which  the  Saxons, 
their  allies,  led  to  such  profit.  They  were  all  the  more  ready 
to  welcome  this  solution  of  the  difficulties  of  their  new  position 
because  they  were  most  of  them  petty  lords,  plain  knights, 
who  had  only  just  so  much  property  as  was  necessary  to  enable 
them  to  live  in  a  simple  manner  and  to  keep  a  war-horse  for 
their  service,  and  who  no  longer  found  any  great  advantage 
in  their  feudal  position.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  they  were  only 


464          GREAT  PARTICULARIST  NATIONS 

separated  from  the  best  Saxon  peasants,  the  farmers  on  a  large 
scale,  by  useless  and  troublesome  distinctions.  The  Saxon 
had  all  the  freedom  and  all  the  advantages  on  his  side.  In  this 
way  the  two  races  rapidly  became  amalgamated,  and  formed 
that  class  of  skilled  farmers  called  the  Gentry  ;  or  rather,  it 
was  in  this  way  that  a  great  part  of  the  Norman  population 
by  a  process  of  assimilation  came  to  be  transformed  into  the 
Saxon  population. 

The  plain  Norman  knights  were  so  much  attracted  by  the 
way  in  which  that  rising  and  intelligent  class  of  clever  Saxon 
farmers  had  worked  the  rich  soil  of  England,  and  by  the  way 
in  which  they  planned  their  life,  that  even  some  time  before 
the  revolt  from  feudalism  and  the  demand  for  the  Great  Charter 
these  knights  did  all  they  could  to  escape  from  military  service 
in  their  endeavour  to  live  in  the  Saxon  style.  It  was  at  this 
time  that  Henry  n.  (1154-89),  who  wished  to  avoid  any  action 
that  might  annoy  "  his  farming  knights  " — note  this  curious 
appellation,  "  nolens  vexare  agrarios  milites  " — proposed  to 
exempt  them  from  military  service  on  condition  that  they 
paid  a  tax  of  exoneration,  and  the  terms  were  eagerly  accepted. 
This  tax  received  the  name  of  scutagium,  scutage-money.  On 
the  payment  of  that  tax  the  knights  were  free  to  remain  at 
home  and  cultivate  their  land. 

But  that  tax  did  not  do  away  with  other  feudal  laws  such 
as  that  by  which,  in  the  case  of  the  minority  of  the  heir,  the 
property  was  put  under  the  wardship  or  guardianship  of  the 
suzerain,  usually  the  king,  which  too  often  was  used  as  an 
opportunity  for  ruining  the  minor  :  or  again,  the  right  held 
by  the  suzerain  or  king  of  choosing  a  husband  for  the  heiress 
when  the  fief  fell  to  the  female  line,  etc.  So  the  knights 
found  it  far  simpler  to  avoid  knighthood  altogether  like  honest 
Saxons  ;  they  did  not  trouble  to  gain  admission  into  the  orders 
of  knighthood.  The  king  protested  when  he  found  himself 
short  of  recruits.  "  Ordinances  decreeing  that  the  honour  of 
knighthood  was  not  to  be  avoided  recur  constantly  in  the 
course  of  the  thirteenth  century  :  they  are  manifest  proof  that 
it  was  only  accepted  with  great  unwillingness.  The  revival  of 
the  spirit  of  chivalry  under  Edward  in.  was  no  more  than^an 
accident  and  a  passing  fashion.  As  early  as  1278  the  king 
commanded  the  sheriffs  to  oblige,  not  only  the  persons  belong- 


THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE  465 

ing  to  the  class  of  knights,  but  all  men  whose  income 
from  ground-rents  amounted  to  £20  sterling,  no  matter  from 
what  lord  and  under  what  title  they  held  their  lands,  to 
be  dubbed  knights.  That  decree  was  afterwards  repeated 
several  times  ;  it  shows  how  much  the  two  classes  were  con- 
founded. In  short,  as  early  as  the  thirteenth  century  the  greater 
number  of  the  knights  appear  to  have  adopted  the  tastes  and 
manners  of  the  class  of  simple  rural  landowners."  x 

And  so  true  was  it  that  the  Saxon  type  had  brought  about 
this  transformation  by  the  force  of  example,  that  even  "  as 
early  as  1074,  in  the  kind  of  manifesto  issued  by  the  barons 
against  William  i.,  the  English,  who  cultivate  their  land  in 
peace,  drink  and  feast  while  their  conquerors  are  obliged  to  make 
war  on  the  Continent,  are  spoken  of  with  a  touch  of  envy."  2 

The  military  organisation  in  use  at  the  end  of  the  fourteenth 
century  shows  the  evolution  to  be  complete  :  the  obligatory 
and  gratuitous  service  which  was  imposed  upon  all  landed 
knights  had  disappeared,  and  the  tax  which  took  its  place 
had  ceased  to  be  gathered.  No  scutage  was  collected,  according 
to  Coke,  after  the  eighth  year  of  the  reign  of  Edward  n. — that  is 
to  say,  after  1315.  Here  is  a  description  of  the  class  of  simple 
Saxonised  knights  :  "  The  kernel  of  the  royal  army — that  is, 
the  army  which  makes  expeditions  into  foreign  lands — is  thus 
composed  of  restless  and  warlike  barons  who  gather  round 
them  volunteers,  men  of  a  like  spirit  with  themselves.  They 
sell  to  the  king  the  help  of  their  regiments  of  adventurers  for 
ready  money.  Most  of  the  old  knights  keep  more  and  more 
aloof  from  these  bands  of  condottieri.  Many  of  them,  even, 
no  longer  bear  the  title  of  knights."  They  only  take  that  of 
squires — that  is  to  say,  of  people  that  are  fit  to  become 
knights — or  else  that  of  gentlemen,  which  is  the  same  thing  : 
people  of  noble  birth,  fit  to  be  made  knights.3 

And,  as  all  those  who  worked  an  estate  producing  £20 
sterling  had  been  required  through  the  sheriff,  although  with 
but  little  success,  to  obtain  admission  to  an  order  of  knight- 
hood, every  good  farmer,  whether  of  Saxon  or  Norman  lineage, 
was  certainly  a  member  of  the  class  of  people  fit  to  be  made 
knights,  and  consequently  bore  the  title  of  squire  or  gentle- 

1  Boutmy,  Le  D&veloppement  de  la  Constitution  en  Angleterre,  pp.  81-83. 

2  Stubbs,  i.  291.  3  Boutmy,  ibid.  pp.  84-88. 

30 


466          GREAT  PARTICULARIST  NATIONS 

man  :  that  is  the  origin  of  those  widespread  and  characteristic 
appellations  among  the  English.     Their  history  is  significant. 

The  intelligent  proprietors  and  farmers  of  estates  belonging 
to  that  class  were  absorbed  in  their  own  affairs.  They  pros- 
pered and  were  very  comfortable  at  home. 

They  were  not  eager  to  throw  themselves  into  public  life  : 
quite  the  contrary,  they  had  cast  it  aside  when  they  broke 
away  from  feudal  service.  Although  the  sheriff  used  to 
summon  them  in  accordance  with  Magna  Carta  to  elect  persons 
among  themselves  in  each  county,  and  subsequently  in  each 
market-town,  to  be  their  representatives  in  Parliament,  they 
took  very  little  trouble  about  it,  knowing  that  the  payment 
of  taxes  was  almost  the  only  topic  to  be  discussed  there.  But, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  it  was  they  who  formed  the  really  capable 
and  influential  class  in  the  country,  so  much  so  that  it  became 
more  and  more  impossible  to  do  anything  without  them.  Their 
help  had  to  be  obtained  for  almost  every  enterprise  in  each 
locality.  Thus  it  soon  happened  that  power  came  to  seek  them 
out  in  their  very  homes. 

And,  in  the  first  place,  a  double  blow  fell  upon  the  sheriff. 
His  power  rapidly  sank  to  a  very  low  ebb  :  everyone,  it  appears, 
abandoned  the  sheriff  to  chill  isolation,  had  nothing  to  do  with 
him,  and  no  one  was  at  all  anxious  for  him  to  acquire  any 
influence.  Soon  after,  the  sheriffs  seem  to  have  been  chosen 
from  among  the  class  of  which  we  have  just  been  speaking, 
whereas  formerly  they  came  from  among  the  most  notable 
people. 

So  the  general  functions  exercised  by  the  sheriff  in  the 
king's  name,  and  equivalent  to  those  of  the  royal  bailiffs  in 
France,  were  deprived  of  their  importance  and  were  passed  on 
to  the  gentry  without  the  gentry  having  bestirred  themselves 
in  the  matter. 

Apart  from  the  sheriffs,  the  kings  had  conceived  the  idea 
of  sending  capable  judges  on  circuit  from  county  to  county, 
in  order  to  administer  justice  more  fairly  everywhere  and  keep 
it  still  more  directly  under  the  king's  control.  But  when  the 
judges  arrived  in  a  county  they  found  it  extremely  difficult  to 
find  out  anything  or  to  do  anything  without  referring  to  these 
men  of  the  class  of  gentry  who  knew  the  locality  and  took  the 
lead  in  all  the  ordinary  matters  of  life.  "  The  judges  seemed 


THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE  467 

to  use  the  knights  (or  squires,  or  gentlemen)  more  and  more  as 
their  auxiliaries.  By  degrees  the  assessment  and  collection  of 
the  taxes,  the  direction  and  arming  of  the  national  police,  the 
duty  of  receiving  the  oath  of  peace,  the  local  investigations  of 
crimes  and  offences,  the  choice  of  the  grand  jury,  the  duty 
of  serving  among  the  limited  number  of  jurymen  who  assisted 
in  pronouncing  judgment,  all  these  things  were  intrusted  to 
committees  of  these  knights,  which  usually  worked  under  the 
direction  of  the  judges  on  circuit."  Thus  it  came  about  that 
these  same  knights  held  a  session  four  times  a  year  ;  they 
gradually  took  all  the  local  administration  into  their  own  hands  : 
roads,  bridges,  prisons,  the  public  administration  of  labour, 
the  guardianship  of  the  parishes,  the  relief  of  the  poor.1  In 
1360  they  were  singly  appointed  as  justices  of  the  peace  for 
the  whole  country  :  they  were  the  predecessors  of  the  famous 
magistrates. 

"  So  all  the  owners  of  freeholds,  the  squires,  gentlemen 
as  well  as  knights,  form  part  of  the  administration,  and  as 
one  century  succeeds  another  this  active,  hard-working  class 
will,  more  and  more,  do  by  itself  and  unrewarded  all  the  work 
of  an  immense  bureaucracy."  2 

This  accounts  for  the  way  in  which  self -government  de- 
veloped among  the  Saxon  race  after  Norman  feudalism  had 
fallen  into  decay  in  England  ;  it  was  accomplished  by  that 
solid  class  of  people  who  lived  on  their  estates  after  the  manner 
of  particularists,  and  in  reality  had  everything  in  their  hands 
long  before  their  nominal  and  frequently  changing  masters 
were  of  necessity  obliged  to  recognise  their  office  and  their 
rights. 

Not  long  after,  they  reacquired  military  power  likewise, 
but  it  must  be  observed  that  they  transformed  it.  They  formed, 
says  a  writer,  a  kind  of  home  service,  a  kind  of  national  guard 
which  was  no  longer  based  on  feudalism,  the  duties  of  which 
were  purely  civil  and  connected  with  matters  of  police.  This 
militia  could  not  be  required  to  leave  its  county  except  when 
Parliament  decided  that  the  case  in  question  was  one  of  urgent 
necessity,  nor  to  leave  the  kingdom  under  any  circumstances 
whatsoever.3 

1  Boutmy,  Le  Dtveloppement  de  la  Constitution  en  Angleterre,  p.  104  ff. 

2  Boutmy,  ibid.  p.  107.  3  Griest,  i.  209.     See  Boutmy,  p.  86. 


468          GREAT  PARTICULARIST  NATIONS 

But  the  great  business  of  these  English  people — and  the 
earlier  part  of  our  history  has  brought  it  out  sufficiently  clearly 
— was  to  profit  by  the  land  :  that  object  they  pursued  in  a 
manner  characteristic  of  the  race.  In  spite  of  some  marked 
instances  of  accidental  complications,  this  has  given  to  their 
history  a  unity  and  a  fundamental  simplicity  which  it  is 
interesting  to  analyse.  This  will  be  the  subject  of  our  next 
chapter. 


CHAPTEK  XXIX 

THE  GREAT  PARTICULARIST  NATIONS  OF  THE  PRESENT 
DAY:   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE— Continued 

WE  have  read  how  the  Saxon  race  in  England,  with  its 
strong  interest  in  the  management  of  small  estates, 
had  succeeded  in  absorbing,  in  assimilating,  the  majority  of 
the  Norman  feudal  race,  the  knights,  and  had  reassumed  the 
government  of  the  country. 

I  said  that  it  was  the  great  aim  of  that  portion  of  the  English 
people  to  maintain  a  land  system  consistent  with  its  particularist 
character  and  likely  to  continue  it.  What  is  remarkable  is  the 
way  in  which,  from  the  commencement  of  this  epoch,  when 
rapid  and  far-reaching  transformations  take  place  in  economic 
development,  the  English  have  continued  to  invent  practical 
means,  shifts  of  all  sorts,  in  order  that  the  land,  whatever  the 
actual  system  of  legislation  in  regard  to  land  might  be,  might 
serve  above  all  for  the  education  of  the  race.  That  was  the 
essential  basis  of  their  history  from  the  beginning,  although 
then  it  was  less  influenced  by  sudden  turns  of  fortune 
and  by  great  changes  in  labour ;  and  their  history  still 
continues  on  the  same  lines.1  Without  making  humani- 
tarian or  philosophic  theories  for  the  better  distribution 
of  the  land  among  all,  or  for  the  definition  of  the  rights 
of  property,  the  Anglo-Saxons  have  from  century  to  century 
stirred  their  practical  intelligence  to  find  a  way  by  which 
the  land  can  really  be  divided  in  a  manner  most  advan- 
tageous for  the  vigorous  exercise  of  their  powers  of  personal 
initiative. 

With  this  object  in  view,  they  secured  the  help  of  the  legists, 
whom  they  were  able  to  win  to  their  side  owing  to  their  powerful 

1  La  Science  Sociale,  November  1902,  vol.  xxxiv.  p.  381;  UAvenir  de 
V Empire  Britannique,  by  P.  E.  Lefebure. 

469 


470          GREAT  PARTICULARIST  NATIONS 

position,  which,  enabled  them  to  dominate  all  the  social  forces 
of  the  country. 

At  first  sight,  nothing  could  appear  more  complicated, 
more  confused  than  the  land  system  in  England,  dating  from 
the  period  we  are  studying.  But  in  reality  it  all  turns  on  this 
simple  fact :  a  man  who  owns  a  piece  of  land,  under  any 
title  whatsoever,  disposes  of  it  entirely  as  he  thinks  fit,  with  a 
view  to  its  producing  the  largest  possible  profit ;  but  if  in  his 
disposal  of  it  he  loses  sight  of  the  higher  interests  of  the  race, 
it  will  not  be  long  before  the  pressure  of  opinion  which  makes 
itself  felt  in  his  surroundings — his  family,  his  neighbourhood, 
and  the  whole  country — leads  by  many  ways,  according  to 
circumstances,  to  reform.  Such  and  such  lands,  for  instance, 
might  be  encumbered  with  entails  with  a  special  object ;  but 
then,  because  of  the  harm  which  they  would  seem  likely  to 
produce  in  the  social  development  of  the  country,  these 
entails  would  be  set  aside  in  a  thousand  ways.  In  fact,  in  spite 
of  all  the  earlier  arrangements  for  the  free  disposition  of  pro- 
perty, and  counter  even  to  all  the  legislative  measures  adopted 
by  Parliament,  which  the  middle  class  scarcely  attended  at  all 
for  a  long  time,  the  most  persistent  characteristic  of  the  land 
system  was  the  freedom  private  individuals  were  allowed  to 
use  in  modifying  it,  by  combining  with  each  other  to  make 
every  imaginable  arrangement,  by  way  of  contract  and  testa- 
mentary disposition,  and  that  freedom  was  always  subordinate 
to  the  dominating  idea  :  the  maintenance  of  estates  of  a  small 
or  moderate  size. 

"  The  system  under  which  large  landed  estates  are  held  by 
the  aristocracy  at  the  present  day  in  England,"  says  Boutmy, 
"  is  not  in  any  way  a  legacy  from  the  Middle  Ages  :  it  is  a 
creation  of  the  last  century.  It  is  more  than  three  hundred 
and  fifty  years  since  the  freedom  of  bequest — that  is  to  say,  its 
extension  to  feudal  property — became  the  rule,  under  a  restric- 
tion that  was  destined  to  disappear  in  1660  which  set  aside  the 
right  of  primogeniture  in  cases  of  intestate  succession.  It  is 
nearly  five  hundred  years  ago  since  the  acuteness  of  lawyers 
invented  a  way  of  freeing  the  land  by  collusive  methods  of  pro- 
cedure, and  actually  obtained  for  the  owners  of  estates  (created 
under  the  feudal  system)  a  very  far-reaching  power  of  disposi- 
tion. England  more  than  any  other  country  was,  even  in  the 


THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE  471 

feudal  days,  a  country  of  freehold  estates  of  small  or  moderate 
size.    The  present  system  of  latifundia  and  of  entails  only  came 
into  force  generally  after  the  Kestoration :  it  is  not  based  on  the 
law,  but  on  a  policy  deliberately  adopted  by  the  upper  classes." 
"  All  the  English  lawyers,"  says  the  same  writer,   "  the 
judges   in   common    law,    judges    in    equity,    and   practising 
members  of  the  profession,  in  turn  declare  their  opposition  to 
these  restrictions  on  the  right  of  the  disposal  of  property. 
Every  century  their  fertile  brains  weave  fictions  of  .new  inter- 
pretations, collusive  methods  of  procedure,  which  nullify  the 
prohibitions  of  the  law.     They  have  spent  as  much  energy 
over  this  task  as  the  French  lawyers  did  over  the  aggrandise- 
ment of  the  royal  power.     The  point  to  bear  in  mind  as  the 
outcome  of  this  long  story  is,  that  with  very  few  exceptions, 
under  what  profess  to  be  most  restrictive  methods  of  land 
tenure,  it  has  always  been  possible  in  England  to  divide  land, 
to  transfer  it,  to  add  it  to  the  property  of  those  who,  adopt- 
ing intelligent  methods  of  farming,  were  anxious  to  extend 
the  area  of  their  estates,  or  convey  it  to  wealthy  merchants 
who  were  ambitious  to  get  a  footing  in  the  counties."  l 

Owing  to  this  pliancy  of  interpretation,  and  this  fecundity 
of  legal  contrivance,  it  was  easy  for  non-possessors  of  land  to 
rise  to  the  possession  of  it.     To  reach  that  position,  neither  then 
nor  now  was  it  necessary  to  become  proprietor  :  land  may  be 
held  under  a  great  variety  of  titles,  and  these  titles,  according 
to  Anglo-Saxon  ideas,  are  all  of  equal  value  provided  that  they 
allow  of  one's  using  the  land  to  one's  own  profit.     There  is  no 
social  distinction  between  a  farmer  and  a  proprietor ;  at  least, 
the  word  "  farmer  "  is  used  indifferently  for  a  tenant  holding  the 
land  on  lease  and  a  proprietor  who  farms  his  own  estate.     One 
can  apply  the  phrase  "  gentleman  farmer  "  to  a  gentleman  who 
cultivates  his  own  land  and  to  a  tenant,  and  in  the  latter  case  the 
fact  that  the  farmer  is  a  tenant  does  not  prevent  his  being 
considered  a  "  gentleman  "  if  he  is  farming  the  land  intelligently 
and  in  such  a  way  as  to  improve  it,  with  the  dominant  convic- 
tion on  his  own  part  that  he  is  himself  the  finest  product  of  his 
own  labour,  and  that  in  himself  he  is  perfecting  the  develop- 
ment of  the  race.     From  the  point  of  view  of  the  law,  it  is  a 
matter  of  indifference  if  a  man  be  a  proprietor  or  a  tenant, 
1  Le  Ddvdoppement  de  la  Constitution  en  Angleterre,  pp.  92-94. 


472          GREAT  PARTICULARIST  NATIONS 

provided  that  he  has  the  financial  qualifications,  if  he  wishes 
to  be  elected  to  Parliament  or  serve  as  a  magistrate  or  take 
his  part  in  the  vestry — that  is  to  say,  the  parish  or  commune. 
This  shows  how  easy  it  is  to  rise  in  the  ranks  of  society  and  to 
the  public  position  of  a  gentleman  :  one  need  not  have  capital 
or  purchase  an  estate.  It  shows  how  far  "  the  gentry  "  form 
an  accessible  class.  They  are  being  constantly  recruited.  They 
draw  to  their  ranks  everyone  who  has  the  personal  qualities 
enabling  him  to  rise.  In  that  way  they  are  closely  connected 
with  the  class  below  :  they  are  not,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  separ- 
ated from  it.  That  accounts  for  the  marked  influence  they 
exercise  over  the  whole  nation. 

It  is  easy  to  understand  how  it  was  that  the  lower  classes 
in  England  did  not  early  feel  the  need  of  resorting  to  urban 
trades  for  their  means  of  living,  since  it  was  always  open  to 
them  to  better  their  position  by  the  development  of  the  land, 
aided  as  they  were  by  the  lawyers,  who  kept  the  road  clear 
for  them  against  the  private  and  lawful  dispositions  of  property 
which  were  opposed  to  their  advance.  They  could  better 
their  position  without  leaving  the  country.  Up  to  the  middle 
of  the  eighteenth  century  England  remained  almost  entirely 
rural.  It  is  easy  to  estimate  what  must  have  been  the  inde- 
pendence and  force  of  character  of  that  homogeneous  multitude 
of  men  who  were  firmly  settled  on  the  land  and  who  were 
actuated  by  the  desire  to  rest  their  claim  of  personal  dignity 
upon  its  possession.  The  greater  number  of  the  towns  were 
as  yet  merely  country  towns.  The  employments  and  customs 
of  the  inhabitants  of  the  towns  were  the  same  as  those  of  the 
rest  of  the  population  of  the  county.  The  large  towns  were 
comparatively  few,  and  their  population  increased  very  slowly 
from  four  to  six  thousand  inhabitants,  in  the  first  half  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  They  depended,  almost  all  of  them,  directly 
on  the  king  ;  it  was  from  him  that  they  held  their  charters, 
and  thus  there  was  no  room  for  misunderstandings  arising 
between  them  and  the  barons  or  knights  in  their  vicinity. 
With  regard  to  the  ordinary  towns,  they  were  brought  under 
the  control  of  the  authorities  of  the  county — that  is  to 
say,  of  the  country  districts — in  accordance  with  the  gene- 
ral administrative  regulations.  By  1360  the  magistrates 
appointed  for  the  whole  county  had  received  the  jurisdic- 


THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE  473 

tion  over  all  the  urban  centres  which  were  not  specially 
exempted.1 

Whilst  those  we  have  just  mentioned  were  attracted  and 
grouped  round  the  gentry,  the  unsuccessful  members  of  the 
families  of  the  high  nobility,  who  as  a  whole  could  not  retain 
their  place  in  the  process  of  social  evolution,  were  also  absorbed 
by  it.  These  families  had  retained  the  bad  traditions  of  knight- 
hood. We  have  seen  that  the  leaders  of  the  mercenary  armies 
were  recruited  from  their  ranks.  They  contended  with  one 
another  for  court  favour.  They  took  the  lead  in  popular 
movements  in  order  to  make  what  profit  they  could  from  them. 
It  was  they  who  had  organised  Parliament,  and  they  were 
summoned  to  it  by  name.  This  summons  by  name  was  the 
only  clear  distinction  that  existed  between  their  rank  and  that 
of  the  plain  knights  ;  and  as  that  summons  was  quite  naturally 
made  only  to  one  of  the  members  of  the  family,  to  the  head 
of  it,  it  came  about  that  the  peers  were  considered  to  belong 
to  a  special  rank  which  belonged  to  them  personally  and  did 
not  extend  to  the  other  members  of  the  family.  Such  was 
the  origin  of  the  House  of  Peers  in  Parliament. 

In  the  circumstances  I  have  just  indicated  these  great 
families  encountered  a  thousand  chances  of  failure.  So  they 
drew  nearer  to  the  gentry,  and  were  glad  to  take  refuge  among 
them  by  adopting  the  Saxon  mode  of  life  and  by  farming  an 
estate  of  moderate  size  as  proprietors  or  tenants.  Their 
baronies  they  divided  up,  unless  they  had  already  been 
deprived  of  them. 

The  Wars  of  the  Roses  exterminated  what  remained  of 
that  high  nobility  of  Norman  lineage,  or  of  the  recruits  it  had 
been  able  to  make.  It  was  simply  a  war  of  succession  between 
the  house  of  the  Dukes  of  Lancaster  and  that  of  the  Dukes 
of  York,  who  disputed  for  the  throne  of  England,  a  red  rose 
being  the  emblem  of  the  former,  a  white  rose  of  the  latter. 
After  both  parties  were  exhausted  by  the  struggle,  the  quarrel 
was  ended  by  the  accession  of  Henry  vn.  of  the  house  of  Tudor, 
of  the  red  rose,  who,  by  marrying  Elizabeth,  daughter  of 
Edward  iv.  of  the  white  rose,  united  in  his  person  the  claims 
of  the  rival  houses. 

During  the  war  the  high  nobility  were  divided  between 
1  See  Boutmy,  pp.  96-99,  305-306. 


474          GREAT  PARTICULARIST  NATIONS 

the  two  factions.  "  Their  motives  were  hardly  disguised.  No 
serious  thought  of  the  rights  or  legitimacy  of  their  leader,  no 
sincere  attachment  to  his  person,  made  the  two  divisions  of 
the  nobility  take  sides  against  one  another,  but  self-interest 
in  its  most  brutal  form,  an  insatiable  desire  for  booty,  and  a 
spirit  of  hatred  which  required  and  sought  a  vent  for  its  fierce- 
ness. During  the  long  period  extending  from  Richard  n.  to 
Henry  vn.  (1377-1485)  they  played  the  cruel  game  of  war 
and  chance.  They  plotted,  they  betrayed  each  other,  they 
massacred  one  another  on  the  field  of  battle,  and  the  day  after 
beheaded  those  whom  the  fortune  of  war  had  spared.  The 
House  of  Lords  was  only  a  place  of  temporary  power  for  the 
faction  which  had  succeeded  in  proscribing  its  opponents  ; 
and  beside  it  a  king  de  facto,  consecrated  perhaps  by  a  '  revolu- 
tion d'hotel  de  ville,'  pleaded,  by  way  of  form,  a  right  in  which 
no  one  any  longer  believed." 

"  After  Henry  vn.  had  stifled  the  last  movements  of  the 
rebellion,  and  caused  the  barons  who  were  still  suspected  of 
leading  armed  bands  to  be  punished  by  the  Star  Chamber, 
the  number  of  the  barons  was  very  greatly  reduced.  The  king 
summoned  no  more  than  twenty-nine  lay  peers  to  his  first 
parliament.  The  old  Norman  and  feudal  nobility — of  high 
degree — no  longer  existed  ;  its  great  estates  had  been  divided 
or  confiscated  by  the  treasury."  l 

What  was  to  be  the  future  of  the  gentry  now  became  clear. 
"  Over  against  these  unstable  factions — who  fought  together 
in  the  Wars  of  the  Roses — stood  the  Chamber  of  the  Commons, 
the  sole  authority  that  was  permanent  and  broadly  national. 
It,  by  force  of  circumstances,  assumed  the  character  of  a  kind 
of  arbitrator.  Of  no  other  body  could  those  who  had  claims 
on  property  arising  out  of  political  action  and  open  to  dispute 
ask  an  uncertain  recognition."  2 

We  know  how  powerful  were  the  gentry  in  the  country 
when  they  lived  on  their  estates,  and  how  little  pleasure  they 
took  in  going  to  Parliament,  which  they  knew  was  not  the 
true  source  of  their  power.  So  it  was  then  for  the  first  time 
that  the  House  of  Commons  "  still  timid,  uncertain,  astonished 
at  the  position  it  was  gaining,  exercised  the  preponderance  of 
authority — and  that  for  more  than  a  century.  Its  archives 
1  Boutmy,  pp.  125,  126,  129.  2  Ibid.  p.  126. 


THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE  475 

were  filled  with  precedents,  large  and  liberal  customs  dominated 
its  Orders,  its  records  were  rendered  illustrious  by  its  claims. 
The  right  of  fixing  the  exact  limits  of  a  law  instead  of  merely 
indicating  the  subject  for  legislation  by  complaints  and  prayers, 
the  privilege  of  voting  taxes  of  all  kinds,  that  of  controlling 
the  use  of  public  money,  the  initiative  of  the  Commons  with 
regard  to  taxes,  the  control  over  the  nomination  of  state  officers 
—in  a  word,  the  whole  immense  prerogative,  to  belong  in  the 
future  to  the  lower  House,  asserted  itself.  Already  it  was  partly 
settled,  and  in  so  far  as  it  could  not  yet  be  settled,  the  lines  of 
its  development  were  indicated  and  noteworthy  precedents 
were  being  created  to  prepare  the  way  for  its  expansion." 

But  that  is  not  all.  When  the  Wars  of  the  Roses  came  to 
an  end,  the  high  nobility,  the  peerage,  the  House  of  Lords,  as 
I  said,  was  decimated,  or  rather,  nearly  annihilated.  Its  vacant 
places  had  to  be  filled  by  a  new  class.  Henry  vn.  chose  almost 
all  the  new  peers  from  the  ranks  of  the  gentry.  From  where 
else  could  he  have  chosen  them  ? 

Thus  the  gentry  spread  everywhere  by  the  natural  develop- 
ment of  things  because  they  had  remained  firmly  attached  to 
their  independence  by  continuing  to  work  their  modest  rural 
domains.  By  remaining  firm  on  this  one  point  they  had 
ended  by  controlling  all.  The  original  Anglo-Saxon  constitu- 
tion, in  spite  of  all  the  diverse  changes  of  fortune  it  had  ex- 
perienced, completely  prevailed  over  the  Norman  institutions 
by  the  very  simple  and  invariable  method  we  have  noted.  It 
first  mastered  them,  then  absorbed  them.  It  remains  to  be 
seen  how,  even  while  it  retained  their  form,  it  altered  the  nature 
of  those  institutions,  changed  their  spirit,  and  modified  the 
effect  they  produced  upon  society.  That  was  what  happened 
when  the  high  nobility  was  reformed  by  the  introduction  of 
the  men  of  the  gentry. 

But  the  main  point  of  difference  between  the  new  nobility 
and  the  old  was  that,  in  accordance  with  its  antecedents,  the 
new  nobility  was  not  in  any  way  military.  Those  who  rose 
to  that  rank  remained  plain  civilians.  That  was  the  end  of 
what  chivalry  still  remained  in  the  high  nobility  in  England. 
All  classes  in  the  country,  then,  were  brought  back  to  an 
ordinary  kind  of  life.  These  peers  of  the  second  period  must 
1  Boutmy,  p.  127. 


476          GREAT  PARTICULARIST  NATIONS 

be  conceived  as  very  much  the  same  as  those  created  by  Louis 
Philip  in  France.  But  the  English  nobles,  owing  to  their 
large  grants  of  land,  were  richer  and  lived  more  sumptuously. 
The  disappearance  of  the  old  Norman  nobility  was  a  gain. 
It  was  also  a  good  thing  that  the  new  nobility  took  its  place 
without  assuming  its  characteristics. 

But  in  so  far  as  the  elevation  of  a  part  of  the  gentry  was 
somewhat  unexpected,  and  was  an  artificial  proceeding,  it 
involved  some  drawbacks.  In  its  natural  and  spontaneous 
development,  the  middle  class  had  not  yet  reached  the  point 
of  being  able  to  fulfil  with  success  the  part  which  had  some- 
what precipitately  devolved  upon  it.  We  ought  to  observe  what 
were  the  duties  it  had  constantly  performed  since  the  beginning 
of  Anglo-Saxon  history.  It  encouraged  and  supported  those 
men  who,  either  owing  to  some  position  they  had  obtained, 
or  because  of  their  tastes  and  abilities,  devoted  themselves 
to  the  management  of  public  affairs,  or,  on  the  contrary,  it 
kept  them  back  according  as  they  governed  to  its  liking  or 
not.  It  encouraged  or  checked  by  its  authority  as  much  as 
by  its  good  sense,  thanks  to  its  own  secure  position.  And  so, 
through  this  double  power  of  urging  and  staying,  it  guided 
the  course  of  events.  But  for  initiating,  organising,  and  ad- 
ministering public  affairs  men  were  needed  who  were  accus- 
tomed to  handle  more  difficult  questions  than  those  connected 
with  the  management  of  an  estate  of  moderate  importance, 
however  painstaking  and  venturesome  it  might  be.  For  that 
reason  the  Saxon  people  in  the  early  days,  as  we  saw,  turned 
to  account  the  services  of  leaders  of  special  ability,  such  as 
Cerdic,  Alfred  the  Great,  Egbert  the  Great.  When  these 
leaders,  men  of  exceptional  endowments,  whom  I  should  rather 
call  agents  holding  a  high  position,  happened  to  make  mistakes, 
as  was  the  case  in  the  Danish  invasion  and  Norman  invasion, 
the  Saxon  people  quietly  retired  to  their  estates  and  there 
defended  themselves  as  best  they  could  till  a  better  opportunity 
occurred.  We  saw,  for  example,  how  they  reassumed  their 
public  action  against  the  Norman  kings  when  they  found 
leaders  among  the  Norman  barons  themselves,  and  supported 
them  in  the  demand  for  the  Great  Charter. 

Certainly  the  members  of  the  gentry  who  were  placed  by 
the  Tudors  in  possession  of  great  properties,  of  titles,  of  the 


THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE  477 

offices  belonging  to  the  high  nobility,  took  advantage  of  the 
opportunity  to  develop  their  abilities  and  adapt  themselves 
speedily  to  affairs  of  importance.  But  it  must  be  well  under- 
stood that  the  Tudors  took  care  to  choose  them  in  such  a  way 
that  these  new  nobles,  these  favourites,  did  not  use  their 
capacities  and  their  resources  to  aid  the  gentry  against  the 
king.  That  is  why  the  Tudors  were  surrounded  by  such  perfect 
courtiers.  They  turned  this  readiness  to  yield  to  the  caprice 
of  royalty  to  account  as  far  as  possible,  and  this  is  what 
gave  to  their  reign  an  appearance  of  omnipotence  and  to  the 
nobility  of  that  time  the  character  of  servility. 

But,  to  tell  the  truth,  that  happened  in  regard  to  these 
creatures  of  the  king  which  usually  happens  with  people  of 
that  kind  :  they  really  only  sought  to  serve  their  own  interests. 
They  made  the  most  of  their  position  for  their  own  advance 
without  devoting  themselves  to  the  king  any  more  than  to 
the  gentry.  They  made  all  sorts  of  scandalous  profits,  the 
result  of  which  was  that  the  less  clever  among  them  or  the 
less  fortunate  fell  into  disgrace,  and  were  replaced  by  others 
of  the  same  stamp. 

One  can  understand  that  a  nobility  of  that  kind,  even  if 
it  was  not  an  actual  hindrance  to  royalty,  could  not,  after  all, 
have  been  of  much  advantage.  Known  to  have  been  actuated 
by  mercenary  motives  it  could  not  but  involve  discredit.  It 
was  no  source  of  strength  to  the  king  but  rather  of  weakness, 
as  was  soon  to  become  evident. 

As  for  the  gentry  who  remained  gentry,  they  proceeded  to 
make  their  way  up  by  their  own  natural  and  automatic  develop- 
ment. They  were  constantly  undergoing  a  process  of  selection. 
The  most  capable  gradually  increased  the  importance  of  their 
estates. 

They  did  that  in  six  ways  mainly  : 

1.  By  buying  up  in  turn  the  small  estates  of  the  less  capable 
farmers ; 

2.  By  selecting  from  among  the  dispossessed  those  who 
seemed  likely  to  take  advantage  of  a  good  opportunity,  and  by 
making  them  tenant-farmers  over  a  part  of  the  newly  acquired 
land  under  vigorous  supervision  ; 

|  3.  By  adopting  the  methods  of  high  farming  over  the  rest 
of  the  estate  thus  enlarged  ; 


478          GREAT  PARTICULARIST  NATIONS 

4.  By  devoting  their  attention  to  the  industrial  products 
of  agriculture — that  is  to  say,  those  products  which  commerce 
could  turn  to  the  best  account ; 

5.  By  leasing  or  buying  common  land  in  order  to  put  it 
under  cultivation  ; 

6.  By  establishing  industries  on  their  estates,  such  as  the 
weaving  of  wool,  lime-kilns,  distilleries,  etc. 

Thus  there  comes  before  us  a  new  type  of  cultivator 
who  is  ready  to  adopt  more  hazardous  operations  and  tends 
to  make  use  of  more  powerful  agents  of  production,  who  leaves 
the  swaddling  clothes  of  the  estate  of  moderate  size  and  creates 
the  domain  that  is  great,  not  only  in  extent,  but  in  the  tech- 
nical methods  it  applies. 

That  is  the  preparation  and  formation  of  the  true  Saxon 
aristocracy. 

The  earlier  advancement  of  part  of  the  gentry  which  we 
have  just  noted,  was  not  useless  to  the  rest :  the  way  had  been 
opened  for  them  ;  it  was  recognised  that  there  was  only  a 
difference  of  degree  between  the  gentry  and  the  nobility,  pro- 
perly so  called.  Those  who  formed  the  nobility  under  the 
Tudors  were  simple  gentlemen  on  the  eve  of  their  elevation  : 
the  then  gentlemen  felt  that  it  was  not  very  difficult  for 
them  at  some  time  to  rise  by  their  own  ability  to  the  rank  and 
position  of  that  nobility  which  was  purely  a  royal  creation. 

When  the  elite  of  the  gentry  by  force  of  energy  began  to 
assume  a  status  superior  to  that  of  proprietorship  of  a 
moderate  estate,  they  insensibly  eliminated  from  the  country 
districts  the  lower  part  of  the  population  whose  small  estates 
and  communal  rights  they  had  acquired. 

Then  only  did  England  cease  to  be  as  absolutely  rural  as 
we  called  it  a  few  pages  since.  Till  then  the  continuous  process 
of  clearing  all  available  land  for  cultivation  had  afforded  suffi- 
cient scope  for  countrymen.  Moreover,  people  could  live  close 
together  without  being  cramped  for  space,  under  the  system 
of  small  farming,  the  only  system  suitable  for  people  of  small 
means ;  for,  as  the  result  of  wars  and  invasions,  the  land  had 
been  burdened  to  an  extraordinary  extent  by  war-taxes, 
danegeld,  Norman  feudal  dues,  etc.  Money  had  been 
expended  in  large  quantities  on  the  wars  of  the  upper 
classes,  who  were  in  the  habit  of  keeping  the  greater  part 


THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE  479 

of  the  land  under  rental.     Very  little  of  it  returned  to  the 
land. 

The  wars,  too,  had  a  further  result.  Periodically  they 
reduced  the  population,  while  at  the  same  time  they  offered 
it  new  openings  for  employment  elsewhere. 

In  the  wars  in  Normandy  and  Guyenne,  and  in  the  Hundred 
Years'  War,  an  immense  number  of  men,  known  in  history  as 
English  Archers,  left  the  country.  Thus,  both  at  the  conclusion 
of  successful  military  expeditions  and  at  times  of  peace  there 
was  a  widespread  emigration  on  the  part  of  people  who  settled 
here  and  there  in  France,  Germany,  and  above  all  in  Flanders. 

The  people  had  so  far  been  able  to  satisfy  the  need  of 
expansion  by  crowding  on  to  small  farms,  and  by  emigrating 
in  detached  groups  after  the  Continental  wars. 

As  a  result  of  the  Hundred  Years'  War  came  the  develop- 
ment, or  rather  the  commencement,  of  navigation.  The 
Saxons — I  have  often  insisted  upon  this  point,  which  appears 
incredible  in  the  face  of  the  maritime  power  of  England  at  the 
present  day — the  Saxons  did  not  take  to  navigation  so  long  as 
agriculture  was  open  to  them.  The  necessity  of  transporting 
troops  to  the  Continent,  and  of  keeping  England  in  touch  with 
France  for  a  whole  century,  impelled  the  kings  of  England  to 
create  a  fleet  of  merchantmen  which  they  could  utilise  as 
transports. 

To  effect  this  object  they  adopted  an  arbitrary  and  factitious 
method. 

Till  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century  the  Hanse  towns  per- 
formed the  part  of  carriers  by  sea  for  England :  one  of  their  great 
privileged  ports  was  London,  as  we  have  said.  Their  principal 
business  was  to  import  from  England  to  Flanders  English 
wools,  renowned  for  their  fine  quality,  and  to  export  them  to 
England  when  they  had  been  made  up  by  Flemish  weavers. 
The  English  kings  withdrew  their  custom  from  the  Hanse 
towns,  and  did  not  allow  wool  to  go  out  of  the  country  or 
cloth  to  come  into  it  except  in  English  ships.  As  a  result  of 
this  policy,  England  came  to  have  a  fleet.  No  sooner  was 
seamanship  a  profession  than  Saxon  energy  developed  it,  and 
thus  gave  new  scope  to  fishing. 

Such  was  the  new  opening  offered  to  English  emigration, 
whilst  the  gentry  devoted  themselves  to  high  farming. 


480          GREAT  PARTICULARIST  NATIONS 

They  were  able  to  devote  themselves  to  it,  for  the  reasons 
we  have  mentioned,  when  times  of  peace  as  well  as  ready 
money  came  to  further  agriculture,  since  the  great  wars  had 
come  to  an  end  with  the  advancement  of  the  essentially  un- 
military  nobility  of  the  Tudors. 

But  the  termination  of  the  wars  and  the  development  of 
high  farming,  two  facts  naturally  connected,  hindered  the 
expansion  of  the  race  in  two  ways.  The  opening  provided 
by  expeditions  abroad  was  closed,  or  at  least  singularly 
diminished ;  the  opening  provided  by  small  farming  gradually 
diminished  as  the  large  estates  extended. 

Then  industry  provided  a  new  opening  for  England.  That 
was  in  the  sixteenth  century.  We  saw,  in  fact,  that  those 
among  the  gentry  who  created  large  estates  introduced  industries 
as  a  means  of  developing  them. 

But  though  England  then  began  to  be  less  exclusively 
agricultural,  she  did  not  therefore  cease  to  be  rural.  Industry 
was  started  and  developed  in  the  country  districts. 

Its  development  was  hastened  by  an  immense  immigration 
of  Flemish  at  the  time  when  Spain  began  to  oppress  the  low 
countries — that  is  to  say,  in  the  second  half  of  the  sixteenth 
century. 

Owing  to  the  way  in  which  agriculture  and  manufacture 
prospered  in  the  hands  of  the  elite  of  the  gentry,  maritime 
commerce  increased. 

Under  the  Tudors,  then,  in  the  course  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  we  find  a  group  of  gentry  which  owes  its  growth  to 
its  own  energy  and  to  the  technical  development  of  its  country 
estates.  This  time  the  Saxon  race  was  to  have  leaders  who 
really  sprang  from  its  own  peculiar  form  of  society. 

It  was  then  that  England  entered  upon  the  extraordinary 
movement  of  expansion  which,  as  we  have  seen,  it  originated 
so  late  in  its  history.  It  could  not  have  started  sooner  ; 
the  Saxons  had  to  have  Saxon  leaders  ;  the  gentry  had  to 
have  landowners  of  great  estates  formed  in  the  Saxon  manner 
for  their  governing  nobility . 

We  can  understand  from  this  why  the  Tudor  period  has 
such  a  glamour  in  the  eyes  of  the  English.  It  is  at  this  epoch 
that  the  English  emerged  entirely  from  the  Norman  system, 
and  that  the  gentry  stepped  into  the  places  of  the  nobility. 


THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE  481 

It  was  then  also  that  the  gentry  learned  how  to  direct  public 
affairs  independently  of  the  nobility,  even  the  new  nobility, 
as  we  shall  soon  see.  In  a  word,  it  was  at  this  period  that 
the  English  found  again  the  racial  characteristics  of  the  pure 
Saxon,  and  the  Saxon  type  acquired  a  capacity  for  great  affairs, 
which  it  had  not  shown  till  then. 

It  is  none  the  less  true  that  during  this  period  the  English 
people  was,  on  the  whole,  without  any  leaders  who  were  worthy 
of  it.  It  was  left  neglected  between  the  nobility  created  by 
the  Tudors  and  the  elite  of  the  gentry  who  were  in  the  process 
of  development,  but  that  process  was  not  yet  complete,  and 
they  were  not  yet  in  the  ascendant. 

As  is  generally  the  way  with  the  English  people  in  similar 
situations,  they  submitted  with  the  best  grace  to  what  they 
were  as  yet  unable  to  prevent,  and  awaited  the  future.  The 
Tudors  took  advantage  of  this  situation,  and  indulged  in  a 
thousand  royal  caprices  :  so  far  as  it  lay  in  their  power,  they 
were  despots. 

But  the  English,  who  pay  very  little  attention  to  the  causes 
of  their  superiority,  did  not  trouble  themselves  to  distinguish 
what  they  did  in  the  Tudor  period,  and  what  wrongs  the  Tudors 
committed  against  them.  All  that  they  have  retained  from 
that  time  is  the  impression  of  a  period  of  great  national  develop- 
ment, and  they  confound  the  movement  which  took  place 
in  the  nation  at  that  time  with  the  personal  history  of  the 
reigning  princes.  It  is  all  the  easier  to  slip  into  this  confusion, 
because  there  is  always  a  kind  of  brilliancy  which  embellishes 
the  reigns  of  princes  who  pose  as  autocrats  with  a  certain 
amount  of  bluster,  and  are  surrounded  by  a  flattering  and 
brilliant  court. 

So  much  for  our  brief  but  clear  outline  of  the  reign  of  the 
Tudors. 

The  events  with  which  that  epoch  closed  will  throw  still 
further  light  on  it. 


CHAPTER   XXX 

THE  GREAT  PARTICULARIST  NATIONS  OF  THE  PRESENT 
DAY:  THE  FOUNDATION  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 

WHEN  the  Stuarts  were  called  to  succeed  the  Tudors, 
who  were  left  without  direct  descendants  after  Eliza- 
beth, they  carried  on  the  system  of  government  of  the  Tudors. 
They  liked  forcible  methods  and  autocracy. 

But  the  elite  of  the  gentry  had  nearly  completed  their 
development.  Under  their  influence  the  House  of  Commons, 
of  which  they  were  members,  became  a  body  of  men  who  felt 
that  they  had  the  power  to  take  into  their  hands  the  detailed 
control  of  public  affairs  independently  of  the  king  and  the 
lords,  who  governed  badly,  as  we  know. 

That  was  the  whole  meaning  of  the  English  Revolution  of 
1648  :  it  represented  the  collision  of  the  new  leaders  of  the 
English  people,  the  elite  of  the  gentry  in  the  House  of  Commons, 
with  the  former  leaders  of  the  nation,  the  reigning  princes  and 
the  lords  they  had  created,  who  had  ceased  to  be  equal  to  their 
task. 

The  struggle  ended  as  it  was  inevitable  it  should  end  :  by 
the  defeat  of  the  king  and  the  House  of  Lords. 

The  elite  of  the  gentry  were  to  be  put  to  the  test ;  they  were 
neither  drilled  nor  disciplined  ;  their  numbers  increased  at 
different  points  in  the  country  without  combination  and  without 
any  common  understanding  ;  to  a  certain  extent  they  were 
still  a  tumultuary  force.  The  result  was  that  while  it  was 
unanimous  in  opposing  the  king  and  the  House  of  Lords, 
the  House  of  Commons  was  divided  into  parties,  and  between 
these  there  was  for  a  time  a  new  cleavage,  due  to  cleverness 
and  force,  to  the  ability  of  Cromwell  and  his  Ironsides. 

But  in  spite  of  craft  and  grip,  Cromwell  and  his  Ironsides 

would  not  have  had  a  long  history  had  not  Cromwell,  by  dis- 

482 


THE  UNITED  STATES  483 

solving  the  House  of  Commons  and  making  himself  sole  governor, 
under  the  title  of  "  Protector  of  the  Commonwealth  of  England, 
Scotland,  and  Ireland,"  begun  to  govern  as  a  "  gentleman  " 
according  to  the  ideas  of  his  class,  to  the  satisfaction  of  the 
English  people,  and  as  the  elite  of  the  gentry  might  have 
done  had  they  concerted  measures  to  better  effect.  We  know 
that  the  English  do  not  pick  quarrels  with  their  leaders  except 
when  they  govern  them  in  a  manner  which  they  consider  un- 
satisfactory. It  is  a  fact  which  constantly  recurs  in  their 
history.  Cromwell  was  all  the  better  able  to  govern  in  that 
way,  because  he  was  a  gentleman  of  some  repute  in  the  county 
of  Huntingdon. 

The  success  of  Cromwell's  government  is  a  proof  in  the 
highest  degree  of  the  capacity  for  government  acquired  by  the 
superior  members  of  the  gentry. 

I  need  not  remind  the  reader  how  Cromwell's  son  and 
successor  did  not  long  carry  on  a  task  to  which  only  the  personal 
ability  of  his  father  was  proportioned.  He  abdicated  in  1659. 

The  elite  of  the  gentry,  who  continued  to  develop  their 
estates  and  carry  on  their  lucrative  enterprises,  then  came 
forward  in  a  body  and  displayed  a  growing  power.  From  that 
time  they  were  really  on  the  same  footing  with  the  nobility 
properly  so  called,  the  lords ;  they  worked  their  way  up  by 
their  ability,  and  recruited  the  lords,  and  took  their  places  one 
after  the  other.  It  was  a  common  thing  to  see  the  father 
sitting  in  the  House  of  Lords,  while  the  son,  even  the  eldest, 
and  the  heir-presumptive  to  the  title,  sat  in  the  House  of 
Commons.  So,  both  the  House  of  Lords  and  the  House  of 
Commons  were  largely  composed  of  and  vigorously  led  by 
the  elite  of  the  rural  gentry. 

They  made  and  unmade  dynasties  :  that  of  the  new  Stuarts, 
the  house  of  Orange,  the  house  of  Hanover.  In  fact,  they 
alone  held  the  reins  of  government  as  they  do  to-day. 

At  this  epoch  England,  Saxon  England,  was  eminently 
aristocratic  and  her  aristocracy  eminently  rural.  But  the 
estate  which  had  become  so  extensive  in  the  hands  of  the  elite 
of  the  gentry  came  near  overwhelming  the  estate  of  moderate 
size  and  checked  the  upward  movement  of  the  rest  of  the 
gentry,  who  were  always  striving  to  rise  in  the  social  scale. 

The  formation  of  a  large  number  of  great  domains  of  the 


484  GREAT  PARTICULARIST  NATIONS 

Saxon  type  laid  obstacles  in  the  way  of  two  things  :  (1)  the 
creation  of  estates  of  a  small  and  moderate  size  ;  (2)  the  eman- 
cipation of  budding  industry  from  the  legislative  domination 
of  the  owners  of  the  great  estates. 

In  other  words,  it  became  difficult  for  the  inferior  gentry  to 
rise  in  the  social  scale,  either  through  the  estate  or  through 
industry.  Both  estates  and  industry,  which  was  still  rural, 
were  closely  guarded  by  the  elite  of  the  gentry,  who  were  always 
on  the  watch  in  Parliament,  in  the  House  of  Lords  and  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  to  adopt  measures  that  were  favourable  to 
the  maintenance  of  large  estates. 

If  this  selfish  and  backward  movement  of  the  elite  of  the 
gentry  against  the  gentry  who  were  seeking  to  rise  in  society 
had  ever  succeeded,  England's  career  would  have  ended  there, 
owing  to  the  degeneration  which  naturally  attacks  any  superior 
body  of  people  as  soon  as  it  ceases  to  receive  new  recruits. 

But  the  gentry  did  not  give  way  to  their  elite  any  more 
than  they  did  to  any  of  the  leaders  whom,  however,  they  had 
found  to  be  necessary  in  the  course  of  their  history. 

They  triumphed  first  on  the  question  of  the  domain,  and  then 
on  that  of  industry. 

But  in  accordance  with  the  law  of  facts  which  we  have  so 
often  observed  in  the  particularist  form  of  society,  they  had 
to  win  their  way  first  on  the  question  of  the  domain,  and  after- 
wards on  the  question  of  industry  :  the  point  from  which  they 
work  is  always  the  estate. 

Let  us  then  consider  in  turn  the  question  of  the  domain  and 
that  of  industry. 

1.  The  question  of  the  domain. 

Those  who  wanted  to  make  new  estates  found  a  way  out  of 
the  difficulty  by  going  to  the  English  possessions  across  the  sea 
and  founding  estates  there. 

The  first  of  the  Tudors,  Henry  vn.,  who  lived  at  the  time  of 
the  great  Portuguese  and  Spanish  discoveries,  followed  the 
general  current  of  thought :  he  wished  to  have  his  share  of 
the  discoveries  and  the  colonies.  He  had  accepted  the  pro- 
posals made  by  Christopher  Columbus,  who,  after  he  had  been 
repudiated  by  the  King  of  Portugal  and  also  by  the  King  of 
Spain,  was  still  on  the  lookout  for  someone  who  would  risk  a 
boat  in  the  discovery  of  the  western  passage  to  India.  But  the 


THE  UNITED  STATES  485 

Queen  of  Spain  at  last  paid  down  the  money  for  the  enterprise, 
and  Christopher  Columbus  remained  Spain's  protege.  Henry 
vii.  did  not  consider  himself  beaten  after  Columbus'  success 
was  published  :  he  enlisted  in  his  service  a  Venetian,  John 
Cabot,  who  discovered  Newfoundland  for  him  in  1497. 

That  led  the  way  to  a  series  of  discoveries  made  in  England's 
name  on  the  American  coast,  south  of  Newfoundland,  between 
the  Atlantic  and  the  Alleghany  Mountains. 

But  for  some  time  the  newly  acquired  land  was  of  little 
use  to  the  English.  The  few  ill-equipped  people,  who  were  at 
first  adventuresome  enough  to  find  their  way  there,  succumbed. 

All  the  pressure  of  circumstances  such  as  I  have  just  de- 
scribed in  the  history  of  the  gentry,  was  necessary  to  render 
those  lands  productive  and  far-famed. 

The  great  emigration,  whose  connection  with  what  I  have 
just  said  I  will  proceed  to  show,  began  almost  at  the  commence- 
ment of  the  seventeenth  century,  a  little  before  the  Revolu- 
tion of  .1648,  just  at  the  time  when  the  elite  of  the  gentry  were 
on  the  point  of  reaching  the  height  of  their  power. 

We  remarked  that  just  when  they  had  reached  that  position, 
they  split  up  into  different  parties,  in  the  midst  of  which  Crom- 
well rose  to  fame. 

Some  of  these  parties,  or  at  least  a  certain  number  of  their 
more  resolute  members,  determined  to  become  entirely  in- 
dependent by  migrating  to  a  new  country,  where  they  would 
admit  no  dissentients. 

Their  exclusiveness  is  significant ;  it  reminds  us  of  what 
the  English  did  when  they  took  possession  of  the  soil  of  Great 
Britain  in  the  fifth  and  sixth  centuries  :  they  wanted  un- 
occupied land,  and  they  did  not  wish  to  lose  their  individuality 
or  to  disappear  in  the  midst  of  a  society  which  was  not  formed 
according  to  their  needs. 

They  ceased,  then,  to  emigrate  one  by  one  and  lose  themselves 
among  the  European  races,  but  acted  their  historic  settlement 
of  Great  Britain  over  again  in  a  country  of  a  similar  type  across 
the  Atlantic. 

Each  great  group  that  landed  in  America  made  its  own 
distinct  constitution,  just  as  each  Saxon  invasion  did  in  past 
times. 

They  were  all  agricultural  emigrants. 


486          GREAT  PARTICULARIST  NATIONS 

They  went  under  the  direction  of  a  lord,  or  one  of  the  elite 
of  the  gentry. 

They  founded  isolated  estates. 

They  appointed  an  assembly,  analogous  to  the  Witena- 
gemot,  to  discuss  public  matters  with  the  governor — that  is  to 
say,  with  the  lord  or  gentleman  who  had  organised  the  party, 
or  else  with  the  representative  of  the  company  or  of  the  sovereign, 
who  sometimes  played  the  same  part  as  the  lords  and  gentle- 
men in  founding  colonies  or  buying  them  from  the  founders. 

Within  a  short  time  everything  was  prosperous,  and  the 
land  between  the  Atlantic  and  the  Alleghanies  was  soon  popu- 
lated, just  as  was  the  south  of  England  by  the  arrival  of  the 
Saxons. 

But  the  owners  of  large  estates  in  England,  who  entrenched 
themselves,  as  we  saw,  in  their  position,  and  defended  them- 
selves with  the  authority  of  Parliament,  were  disquieted  by 
this  new  development  of  the  gentry  in  the  Colonies.  They 
tried  to  parry  the  blow  with  which  it  before  long  threa- 
tened them  by  making  use  of  the  resources  which  they  had 
realised  in  the  course  of  their  upward  movement.  To  this  end 
they  adopted  the  colonial  system  of  the  Continental  races,  who 
made  a  point  of  developing  the  Colonies  for  the  advantage  of 
the  metropolis  by  working  them  in  such  a  way  as  to  bring  profit 
to  the  "  mother  country." 

Accordingly,  the  English  Parliament  decreed  that  the  in- 
habitants of  the  Colonies  should  be  bound  to  send  all  their 
produce  to  England  and  to  buy  all  their  merchandise  from 
no  markets  but  the  English  markets.  Pitt,  the  then  Prime 
Minister,  who,  however,  called  himself  a  friend  of  the 
Americans,  declared  in  the  House  of  Commons  that  America 
had  no  right  to  manufacture  even  a  nail  for  a  horseshoe. 

"The  exportation  of  hats  from  one  colony  to  another  was  pro- 
hibited, and  a  hat-maker  could  not  have  more  than  two  ap- 
prentices at  a  time ;  for  if  the  Colonies  are  left  to  do  as  they  like, 
said  the  defenders  of  these  vexatious  laws,  they  will  supply 
the  whole  world  with  hats."  A  characteristic  declaration  !  l 

Not  only  were  the  colonists  very  considerably  annoyed  by 
these  measures,  "  but  they  soon  perceived  that  if  England's 
claim  to  tax  her  Colonies  for  her  own  profit,  and  according  as  it 

1  Hist,  des  ftiats  Unis,  par  Nolte,  vol.  i.  p.  220. 


THE  UNITED  STATES  487 

suited  her  pleasure,  were  once  recognised,  a  system  of  oppression 
might  be  introduced,  which  would  gradually  become  intolerable, 
and  which  it  would  no  longer  be  possible  to  abolish  later  on. 
Since  they  were  not  represented  in  the  English  Parliament, 
what  was  there  to  prevent  the  House  from  continuing  to  lighten 
the  taxes  in  England  at  the  expense  of  the  Americans  ?  And 
what  attention  would  that  assembly  pay  to  the  consideration 
of  taxes  from  which  its  members  would  be  exempted  ?  "  1 

"  Such  were  the  considerations  which  led  the  American 
colonists  to  deny  that  the  English  Parliament  had  the  right  to 
levy  any  taxes  upon  the  Colonies,  declaring  that  all  attempts 
to  levy  them  would  violate  their  privileges  in  two  ways  ;  for, 
they  had  been  granted  by  royal  charters  the  right  as  colonists 
to  tax  themselves  for  their  own  needs,  and  as  British  subjects 
they  ought  not  to  pay  any  taxes  save  those  imposed  by  their 
representatives  :  but  they  were  not  represented  in  the  English 
Parliament."  2 

We  shall  now  discover  what  an  important  point  it  was  for 
the  Anglo-Saxon  race  that  they  had  taken  possession  of  an 
unoccupied  land,  or  of  land  that  had  become  uninhabited. 

How  could  those  young  Colonies,  which  were  still  engaged 
in  clearing  the  ground  for  cultivation  and  which  obtained 
almost  all  their  manufactured  goods  from  England,  have  been 
able  to  find  any  means  of  resisting  England,  powerful  as  she 
then  was,  had  not  the  whole  of  their  population  had  the  same 
particularist  form  of  society,  the  same  ideas  concerning  the 
conditions  of  existence,  and  the  same  estimate  of  the  conse- 
quence that  would  follow  if  the  claims  of  the  metropolis  were 
realised  ?  Suppose  that  these  English  colonists  had  been 
planted  here  and  there  in  the  midst  of  a  population  of  another 
type,  such  as  the  Mexicans  or  Peruvians  ;  suppose  that  the 
whole  of  that  population  had  been  taxed  by  England,  and  ask 
yourself  what  the  Americans  of  English  origin  could  have  done 
to  oppose  that  tax  if  they  had  been  swallowed  up  in  the  midst 
of  the  surrounding  native  tribes,  who  had  been  accustomed  for 
centuries  to  carry  the  greater  part  of  their  harvest  to  the 
public  storehouses. 

The  strength  of  the  Saxon,  in  his  voluntary  isolation  on  his 
estate,  lies  in  the  fact  that  all  the  people  he  has  at  his  side  are 

1  Hist,  des  tiats  Unis,  p.  222.  2  Ibid.  pp.  222-223. 


488  GREAT  PARTICULARIST  NATIONS 

of  the  same  stamp  as  liimselfj  and  that  consequently  they 
have  a  common  sympathy  with  him  which  makes  them  ready 
to  combine  in  action  when  such  action  would  be  beneficial. 

That  is  why  the  colonists  were  unanimous  in  their  opinion 
of  the  gravity  of  England's  claims,  which  is  all  the  more  remark- 
able because,  in  the  given  circumstances,  the  colonists  were 
aware  that  they  were  rich  enough  to  satisfy  England's  demands. 
So  their  resistance  was  not  prompted  by  the  bitter  indignation 
of  people  in  actual  want,  but  by  the  reflection  that  their  social 
organisation,  their  self-government  was  being  threatened. 
Upon  so  subtle  and  yet  so  decisive  a  point  no  population 
except  a  purely  Saxon  one  could  have  a  spontaneous  under- 
standing. Without  that  understanding  the  cause  would  have 
been  completely  lost,  and  English  America  would  have  become 
like  the  colonies  of  other  European  races. 

A  further  point  is  very  clearly  brought  out  at  this  juncture  : 
The  unanimity  of  the  Saxons  with  regard  to  their  inde- 
pendence would  have  been  useless  had  they  not  possessed 
the  triple  instrument  necessary  for  the  execution  of  their  pur- 
poses— namely,  bodily  strength,  personal  initiative,  and  the 
resources  furnished  by  the  estate.  That  threefold  instrument 
was  set  going,  and  how  great  was  its  power  of  work  is  shown 
by  the  American  colonists  in  their  triumphant  struggle  against 
England. 

Without  bodily  strength  they  would  never  have  been  able 
to  carry  on  a  war  in  which  they  were  ill  provided  with  arms 
and  with  appliances  of  every  kind  ;  and  yet  it  was  these 
"  peasants,"  as  the  English  called  them,  who  defeated  the 
troops  England  had  enlisted  from  among  her  lower  classes  or 
from  Germany. 

Without  personal  initiative  they  could  not  have  made  up 
for  the  lack  of  previous  organisation  and  acquired  discipline. 

Without  the  resources  of  the  estate  they  would  have  been 
unable  to  borrow  money  as  they  did,  on  the  security  of  all  the 
property  of  the  colony,  as  Franklin  persuaded  them  to  do. 

Now  it  must  be  clearly  recognised  that  the  threefold  instru- 
ment to  which  the  Saxons  owe  the  maintenance  of  their  liberty 
— namely,  bodily  strength,  individual  initiative,  the  resources 
of  the  private  estate — was  the  outcome  of  their  aim  in  life,  which 
was  to  create  for  themselves  independent  estates. 


THE  UNITED  STATES  489 

Therein  lies  the  basis  of  American  independence. 

We  again  find  ourselves  face  to  face  with  the  same  problem 
as  in  England.  This  people  was  certainly  excellently  con- 
stituted for  resistance  ;  it  is  none  the  less  true  that  in  a  huge 
undertaking  such  as  that  of  a  war  against  a  great  power,  it 
needed  leaders  who  were  well  versed  in  great  affairs. 

It  was  not  only  a  question  of  conducting  a  great  war,  but 
it  was  necessary  above  all  to  unite  in  one  bond  the  various 
English  Colonies  in  America  which  were  absolutely  independent 
of  one  another,  and  were  each  directly  connected  with  the 
metropolis,  and  had  practically  no  dealings  with  each  other. 
We  observed  that  they  were  purposely  founded  independently, 
in  order  that  each  colony  should  include  only  persons  of  similar 
opinions  ;  at  that  time  they  were  divided  into  separate  religious 
groups  :  the  Puritans,  under  Sir  William  Penn  in  Pennsylvania  ; 
the  Universal  Tolerants,  the  followers  of  Roger  William  in 
Rhode  Island  ;  the  Catholic  Tolerants,  under  Lord  Baltimore 
in  Maryland,  etc. 

The  problem  was  solved  in  exactly  the  same  way  as  in 
England  :  the  large  estate,  with  its  advanced  methods  of  agri- 
culture, produced  leaders  who  were  equal  to  the  vast  tasks 
before  them. 

There  was  one  colony  in  which,  contrary  to  the  general  rule, 
the  large  estate  had  developed  over-rapidly  under  the  influence 
of  the  Saxons — namely,  Virginia.  Virginia  was  not  only  the 
oldest  of  the  Colonies,  as  it  dated  from  1607,  and  had  a  start 
over  the  others  ;  it  not  only  had  a  perceptibly  warm  climate, 
which  caused  the  harvests  to  be  very  abundant ;  but  it  had 
introduced  the  practice  of  buying  negroes,  which  had  enabled 
the  colonists  to  pass  rapidly  from  small  farming  and  farming 
on  a  moderate  scale  to  farming  on  a  vast  scale.  So  the  Virginians 
took  the  lead  in  the  movement  towards  American  independence. 
They  were  in  the  position  of  the  nobility  in  relation  to  the 
colonial  gentry. 

The  Assembly  of  Virginia,  a  kind  of  Witenagemot  which,  as 
we  observed,  existed  in  each  colony,  was  the  first  to  oppose  the 
system  of  English  taxation  in  America  :  in  May  1765  it  passed 
a  motion  that  no  power  but  Virginia  should  tax  Virginia. 

The  other  colonies  followed  the  example  :  "As  soon  as 
they  heard  of  the  resolution,  they  hastened  to  follow  Virginia's 


4QO          GREAT  PARTICULARIST  NATIONS 

example.  In  the  province  of  Massachussets  James  Otis  pro- 
posed that  an  American  Congress  should  be  convened,  which 
should  meet  without  the  authorisation  of  the  English  Govern- 
ment. All  the  colonial  assemblies  were  invited  to  send  dele- 
gates to  New  York  on  the  first  Monday  in  October  1765  .  .  . 
nine  out  of  thirteen  colonies  sent  representatives.  .  .  ."  * 

That  was  only  the  beginning  of  the  movement ;  but  ten 
years  later  the  same  thing  recurred.  "  Seeing  that  the  colony 
of  Virginia  was  in  some  sort  leader  of  the  others,  it  was  decided 
that  the  first  declaration  of  Independence — that  is  to  say,  of 
total  separation  from  England — should  be  made  by  that  colony. 
At  the  meeting  of  the  Continental  Congress  of  the  8th  of  June 
1776,  Henry  Lee,  the  Virginian  deputy,  after  a  stirring  speech 
submitted  the  following  resolutions  to  the  assembly  : 

"  That  the  united  colonies  are,  and  should  be  by  rights, 
free  and  independent  states  ;  that  they  are  freed  from  all 
loyalty  to  the  Government  of  Great  Britain  ;  and  that  all 
political  relations  between  them  and  the  State  of  Great  Britain 
arc  and  must  be  entirely  broken  off ; 

"  That  it  is  imperative  to  adopt  efficacious  measures  im- 
mediately for  contracting  foreign  alliances  ; 

"  That  a  scheme  for  a  confederation  be  prepared  and  des- 
patched to  the  various  colonies,  that  they  may  study  it  and 
give  it  their  approbation."  2 

Here  we  see  in  strong  relief  the  new  and  superior  element 
in  the  mechanism  which  created  the  United  States,  and  it  has 
often  played  its  part  in  the  history  of  the  Saxon  race  :  men 
well  fitted  for  administration  on  a  large  scale. 

After  this  concise  classification  of  the  elements  at  work, 
let  us  show  by  a  few  detailed  examples  how  far  the  facts  corre- 
spond to  it. 

Immediately  after  the  first  Congress  of  New  York  in  1765, 
mentioned  above,  "  a  general  league  was  spontaneously  organ- 
ised in  North  America  with  the  object  of  putting  a  stop  to 
the  use  of  all  English  merchandise  (of  that  merchandise  which 
it  had  been  attempted  to  thrust  upon  the  Colonies).  A  Society 
for  the  Promotion  of  Art  and  Commerce  was  founded  at  New 
York,  and  markets  were  opened  for  the  sale  of  articles  of 
American  manufacture  (for  industry  was  beginning  to  take 

1  Hist,  des  fitats  Uni*,  p.  230.  z  Ibid.  p.  305. 


THE  UNITED  STATES  491 

root  there)  :  the  cloth,  woollen  goods,  and  paper  hangings 
that  were  brought  there  sold  easily  ;  and  as  it  was  feared  that 
the  woollen  factories  would  run  short  of  raw  material,  it  was 
decided  that  no  more  sheep  should  be  eaten.  Men  and  women 
pledged  themselves  to  wear  nothing  but  clothes  made  of  cloth 
manufactured  by  Americans.  At  Newport,  at  Boston,  families 
accustomed  to  drink  tea  made  infusions  of  dried  raspberry- 
leaves.  The  women  were  eminently  vigorous  promoters  of 
the  league  against  the  commerce  of  the  mother  country.  They 
displayed  an  incredible  energy  and  activity  in  the  fabrication 
of  their  garments.  In  the  family  of  a  man  of  note,  James 
Dixon  (at  Newport,  Rhode  Island),  487  yards  of  cloth  were 
woven  and  36  pairs  of  stockings  knitted  in  the  space  of  eighteen 
months."  1 

Similar  efforts  were  made  later  on  to  procure  means  for 
military  defence  ;  that  was  ten  years  later,  in  1775,  when  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  was  made.  Here  is  a  description 
of  the  beginning  of  hostilities  : 

"  The  English  troops  continued  to  arrive  at  Boston,  and 
General  Gage  set  spies  upon  the  patriots  (the  Americans)  with 
the  object  of  discovering  where  they  were  hiding  their  military 
stores.     The  inhabitants  on  their  side  kept  their  eye  upon  him, 
in  order  to  give  warning  if  he  attempted  to  take  possession  of 
any  of  their  depots.     On  hearing  that  an  artillery  depot  had 
been  founded  at  Salem  (by  the  Americans),  General  Gage  sent 
one  of  his  officers  with  a  small  detachment  to  take  possession 
of  it.     But  a  swift  messenger  got  the  start  of  him,  and  reached 
Salem  first :    the  ordnance  was  removed  from  the  magazines 
and  scattered  over  the  country  ;  then  the  population  who  were 
in   church   when   the   English   detachment   arrived   suddenly 
issued  forth  and  gathered  together,  all  armed,  in  front  of  the 
drawbridge.     Upon  the  approach   of    the  English  the  draw- 
bridge was  raised  and  Colonel  Pickering,  an  American,  informed 
the  English  commandant  that  the  arms  he  had  come  to  seize 
were  the  property  of  the  people.     Whereupon  the  English 
officer  ordered  his  soldiers  to  seize  a  large  boat  in  order  to  row 
across  to  the  other  side  ;  but  Joseph  Sprague,  the  owner  of  the 
boat,  immediately  bored  a  hole  in  it,  causing  it  to  leak.     Seeing 
that  if  he  crossed  to  the  other  side  a  serious  fight  would  ensue 

1  Hist,  des  fitats  Unis,  p.  232. 


492          GREAT  PARTICULARIST  NATIONS 

between  his  body  of  men  and  the  inhabitants,  who  would  end 
by  gaining  the  advantage,  owing  to  their  steadily  increasing 
numbers,  the  English  commandant  asked  Colonel  Pickering  to 
allow  him,  in  order  to  save  appearances,  merely  to  cross  the 
drawbridge,  pledging  himself  upon  his  honour  to  return  to 
Boston  and  renounce  his  enterprise.  Colonel  Pickering  saw 
no  reason  to  refuse  the  request,  and  he  ordered  his  soldiers,  as 
well  as  the  crowd  of  inhabitants,  to  withdraw  to  the  two  sides 
of  the  road.  At  last  the  drawbridge  was  lowered,  the  English 
soldiers  crossed  it,  marching  between  silent  ranks  of  patriots  ; 
after  going  a  few  yards  beyond  them  they  turned  back,  recrossed 
the  bridge,  and  returned  to  Boston. 

"  A  short  time  after,  General  Gage,  on  being  informed 
that  a  large  quantity  of  arms  had  been  accumulated  at  Concord, 
about  twenty  miles  from  Boston,  sent  a  detachment  of  800  men, 
under  the  command  of  Major  Pitcairne,  with  orders  to  take 
possession  of  it.  Once  again  the  expedition  failed,  owing  to 
the  vigilance  of  the  patriots  of  Boston.  It  had  been  arranged 
that  if  they  heard  that  a  strong  English  expedition  had  made 
ready  to  leave  Boston,  a  lighted  lantern  should  be  hung  from 
the  top  of  the  church  on  the  north  side  as  a  signal,  and  that 
a  special  watch  should  be  set  at  Charlestown  to  look  out  for 
the  appearance  of  the  signal.  On  the  night  following  the 
departure  of  the  English  detachment,  the  inhabitants  of 
Charlestown  who  had  been  charged  to  watch  for  the  signal 
saw  the  gleam  of  the  lantern.  Straightway  the  town  was  all 
agog,  and  messengers  were  despatched  in  all  directions.  The 
Bostonians,  besides  giving  the  signal  to  Charlestown,  had  also 
sent  messengers  into  the  country  round.  One  of  these,  named 
Paul  Revere,  left  Boston  by  boat,  took  horse  as  soon  as  he 
landed,  and  went  to  a  house  in  Medfort  which  was  the  temporary 
residence  of  the  two  great  promoters  of  the  revolutionary 
movement,  John  Hancock  and  Samuel  Adams.  As  he  drew 
near  at  a  gallop  the  sentinel  called  out  to  him  not  to  make  so 
much  noise.  '  Noise,'  answered  Revere,  '  you  will  have  enough 
of  it  in  a  minute.  The  regulars  are  coming  !  '  After  having 
done  his  commission  with  regard  to  Hancock  and  Adams,  he 
continued  on  his  way,  stopping  at  all  the  farms  on  the  road 
and  arousing  the  inhabitants.  While  the  American  colonists 
were  making  ready  their  means  of  defence,  the  English  detach- 


THE  UNITED  STATES  493 

ment  crossed  the  bay,  and  following  the  edge  of  the  marsh,  in 
silence  directed  their  course  towards  Concord.  On  a  sudden 
the  bells  of  the  neighbouring  towns  began  to  ring,  proving  to 
the  English  officers  beyond  a  doubt  that  the  alarm  had  been 
given.  While  this  was  going  on  the  inhabitants  of  Concord 
were  carrying  their  ammunition  out  of  the  town  and  hiding  it 
in  the  woods.  So,  when  the  English  regulars  arrived  they 
only  found  a  few  cannons,  which  it  had  been  impossible  to 
remove  and  which  they  spiked  ;  but  they  avenged  themselves 
for  their  vexation  by  tearing  down  the  '  poles  of  liberty  '  which 
the  inhabitants  had  stuck  up,  and  by  burning  the  house  where 
the  magistrates  used  to  meet. 

"  The  Americans,  who  had  withdrawn  to  the  neighbouring 
hills  on  the  approach  of  the  English,  had  witnessed  the  deeds 
their  enemies  had  committed  in  the  town ;  they  could  no 
longer  contain  their  anger,  and  advanced  towards  the  bridge 
of  Concord,  which  was  occupied  by  an  English  detachment, 
and  tried  to  dislodge  it.  After  a  short  engagement  the  regulars 
dispersed,  and  the  main  body  was  seized  by  a  panic,  and  followed 
them.  The  English  officer  then  decided  to  beat  a  retreat. 
It  was  quite  time  to  do  so.  He  was  more  than  twenty  miles 
from  Boston  ;  the  bells  and  the  sound  of  firing  had  roused 
the  whole  country,  and  from  all  sides  the  inhabitants  were 
hastening  up  without  order  or  discipline  to  avenge  their  fellow- 
countrymen.  Screening  themselves  behind  the  trees,  rocks, 
and  walls,  the  Americans  aimed  at  the  '  red-coats  '  as  they 
passed.  An  English  officer  who  took  part  in  the  expedition 
said  afterwards  that  their  opponents  swarmed  about  them  in 
such  numbers  that  they  seemed  to  have  fallen  from  the  sky. 
At  each  step  several  English  soldiers  fell  dead  or  wounded  ; 
then  those  patriots  who  had  just  fired  hastened  to  reload,  and 
ran  on  ahead  in  order  to  bear  down  again  upon  the  soldiers 
as  they  passed.  Only  a  very  small  number  of  English  would 
have  escaped  had  not  Lord  Percy  come  to  their  assistance 
with  fresh  troops.  He  formed  his  troops  into  a  large  square 
open  in  the  front,  into  which  the  fugitive  soldiers  came  for 
refuge.  An  English  historian  says  that  they  remained  several 
hours  stretched  on  the  ground  powerless  to  move  and  with 
their  tongues  lolling  out  of  their  mouths  like  dogs  after  a  hunt. 
But  the  danger  was  not  over  ;  the  woods  were  filled  with  rebels, 


494          GREAT  PARTICULARIST  NATIONS 

and  in  spite  of  his  1800  men  and  his  pieces  of  ordnance,  Lord 
Percy  only  with  great  difficulty  succeeded  in  keeping  the 
Americans  at  a  distance.  He  beat  a  retreat  very  slowly, 
answering  to  the  fire  of  the  enemy,  and  his  troops  congratulated 
themselves  at  the  end  of  the  day  upon  reaching  Boston,  and 
were  thankful  to  put  themselves  under  the  protection  of  the 
men-of-war  anchored  in  the  roadstead."  1 

That  is  the  famous  day  of  April  19,  1775,  which  opened 
the  war  of  independence. 

Immediately  afterwards  the  Americans  formed  themselves 
into  united  bands  like  regular  troops  : 

"  Everyone  stood  in  the  clothes  in  which  he  left  home,  one 
in  his  old  working  jersey,  another  in  his  shirt  sleeves,  and  almost 
all  armed  with  hunting  guns,  hardly  two  of  which  had  the  same 
bore.  Some  of  them,  especially  the  men  from  Virginia,  wore 
hunting  clothes  made  of  brown  holland  cloth  with  these  words 
embroidered  on  the  front :  '  Liberty  or  Death.'  They  lived 
as  best  they  could,  building  themselves  huts  of  branches,  and 
their  food  was  of  the  coarsest ;  they  thought  themselves  happy 
when  they  had  not  to  go  altogether  without  it. 

"  The  captures  made  by  the  Americans  from  the  English 
stores  soon  improved  their  store  of  appliances."  2 

So  much  for  the  people. 

These  are  their  leaders  : 

When  the  appeal  was  made,  immediately  after  the  engage- 
ment at  Boston,  to  form  bands,  as  in  regular  armies,  "  the 
patriots  nocked  to  the  neighbourhood  of  that  town.  General 
Putnam,  a  colonist,  was  in  the  fields  when  a  messenger  arrived 
from  Boston  to  warn  him:  he  straightway  abandoned  his  plough, 
and,  without  giving  himself  time  to  change  his  dirty  shirt,  he 
mounted  a  horse.  On  the  morning  of  the  next  day  he  was  at 
Cambridge  (Massachussets),  having  travelled  a  distance  of  more 
than  100  miles  in  18  hours.  The  story  is  told  that  General  Gage 
was  frightened  at  having  so  brave  and  experienced  an  adversary, 
and  secretly  offered  to  nominate  him  for  the  post  of  major- 
general  in  the  English  army,  and  in  addition  to  give  him  a 
large  sum  of  money,  if  he  would  consent  to  leave  the  rebel 
party.  But  General  Putnam,  when  he  put  himself  at  the  head 
of  the  colonists,  meant  to  defend  his  own  cause.  In  a  short 

1  Hi. st.  des  £tats  Unis,  pp.  269-276.  2  Ibid.  p.  296. 


THE  UNITED  STATES  495 

space  15,000  men  were  assembled  round  about  Boston  ;  and 
in  spite  of  their  absolute  lack  of  acquired  discipline,  and  the 
scarcity  of  ammunition,  they  considered  themselves  strong 
enough  to  attempt  to  keep  the  English  army,  which  was  com- 
posed of  5000  regular  soldiers,  shut  up  in  the  town."  1 

Let  us  end  with  the  most  famous  of  the  leaders,  Washington  : 
"  He  was  more  than  six  foot  tall,  very  broad  across  the 
shoulders,  and  very  strong  ;  perhaps  somewhat  heavy  in  his 
movements. 

"  He  was  born  in  the  county  of  Westmoreland  in  Virginia, 
and  was  first  a  land  surveyor,  as  was  Lincoln  in  after  years. 
He  never  had  much  taste  for  reading  ;  born  to  an  active  life,  he 
preferred  to  study  men  and  things  as  he  saw  them  in  everyday 
life.  He  could  well  be  called  '  the  most  reasonable  of  great 
men.' 

"In  1755  he  distinguished  himself  in  a  war  which  the 
English  made  against  the  French  in  Canada.  One  day  when 
the  English  had  suffered  a  defeat  he  so  skilfully  handled  his 
provincial  militia  as  to  cover  the  retreat  of  the  English  troops 
and  save  them  from  certain  destruction.  After  the  skill  in 
manoeuvres  he  displayed  on  that  day  he  was  made  colonel  and 
commandant  of  all  the  troops  in  Virginia.  He  soon  left  the 
service  and  married  a  young  widow,  whose  two  children  he 
adopted.  He  devoted  himself  to  the  peaceful  occupations 
of  agriculture  on  the  banks  of  the  Potomac,  improving  his 
property  of  Mount  Vernon,  which  he  had  inherited  at  the 
death  of  his  mother. 

"  When  the  rupture  with  England  took  place,  Washington 
left  his  favourite  occupations  and  took  part  in  the  first  Congress 
of  Philadelphia.  His  noble  character,  and  the  notable  part 
he  played  in  the  Canadian  war,  caused  him  to  be  summoned 
by  the  second  Congress  to  take  the  command  in  chief  of  the 
American  armies."  2 

I  need  not  dwell  on  the  issue  of  the  struggle  engaged  in  by 
the  English  colonists  of  America,  remarkable  as  it  was ;  but 
in  that  great  event  we  have  seen  very  clearly  the  traditional 
manner  in  which  the  gentry  solved  the  fundamental  question 
of  the  estate  of  small  and  moderate  size,  a  question  which  had 
recently  been  brought  forward  in  England  during  the  seven- 

1  Hist,  des  £tats  Unis,  pp.  277-278.  2  Ibid.  pp.  292-295. 


496  GREAT  PARTICULARIST  NATIONS 

teenth  century  by  the  creation  of  large  estates,  and  by  the 
other  causes  before  mentioned  of  the  increasing  insufficiency 
of  land  in  the  metropolis.1 

The  gentry  continued  to  solve  the  problem  by  creating 
fresh  colonies  either  in  America  itself  or  in  Australia,  New 
Zealand,  and  East  Africa.  As  for  the  leaders  of  the  English 
people,  they  have  learned  to  treat  their  colonies  better  :  they 
have  learned  their  lesson. 

Now  that  we  have  seen  the  elucidation  of  the  question  of 
the  estate,  it  remains  for  us  to  find  out  the  solution  of  that  of 
industry,  which  soon  presented  itself,  as  I  said  at  the  beginning 
of  this  chapter. 

2.  The  question  of  industry. 

It  is  obvious  that  the  extraordinary  development  of  in- 
dustry in  England  was  due  to  the  fact  that  up  till  the  rupture 
of  the  two  countries  she  had  rejoiced  in  the  monopoly  of 
supplying  the  American  Colonies,  which  had  become  numerous 
and  flourishing. 

The  lesson  given  by  America  also  helped  her.  She  under- 
stood that  it  is  the  wisest  course  to  develop  in  industry,  as 
in  everything  else,  the  energy  that  comes  from  struggling,  and 
the  attention  needed  for  the  incessant  improvements  upon 
which  progress  depends,  in  order  to  rise  superior  to  all  the 
disappointments  caused  by  the  failure  of  factitious  means  to 
success,  such  as  monopolies. 

From  that  time  English  industry  strove  to  bring  round  the 
great  landowners,  who  had,  with  such  unfortunate  results, 
made  trial  of  the  laws  of  commercial  monopoly  with  the  Colonies, 
to  the  more  and  more  complete  acceptation  of  free  competition. 

There  are,  of  course,  on  every  question,  in  every  part  what- 
soever of  the  human  race,  some  people  who  check,  others  who 
promote  progress.  This  double  tendency,  which  was  only 
slightly  marked  owing  to  the  homogeneity  of  the  Saxon  type, 
was  then  represented  by  the  Tories  and  the  Whigs. 

The  progress  towards  free  competition  was  therefore  made 
by  slow  degrees,  under  the  balancing  action  of  these  two 
parties. 

But  the  impetus  was  given  by  the  manufacturers.  And  it 
is  not  difficult  to  understand  with  what  vigour  English  in- 
1  See  the  previous  chapter. 


THE  UNITED  STATES  497 

dustry  developed  under  the  influence  of  men  who  were  eager 
for  competition  and  who  aimed  at  putting  themselves  in  the  way 
of  becoming  superior  to  everything  under  the  system  of  the 
freest  possible  competition. 

It  is  also  easy  to  understand  with  what  eagerness  these 
manufacturers,  who  possessed  all  the  Saxon  fighting  instincts, 
took  up  all  the  new  mechanical  and  steam  inventions  which 
began  to  appear  owing  to  the  progress  made  by  science. 

Such  was  the  origin  of  the  immense  and  sudden  develop- 
ment of  industry  in  Great  Britain. 

It  was  at  that  time  that  the  enormous  urban  centres,  hitherto 
unknown  in  England,  were  formed  :  centres  of  industry,  of  com- 
merce, mining  centres  for  coal,  the  new  and  incomparable 
motor  force. 

The  openings  thus  secured  for  the  population  in  the  metro- 
polis alone  were  such  that  now,  after  scarcely  more  than  a 
century  has  elapsed,  the  population  of  the  towns  is  at  least 
five  times  as  large  as  that  of  the  country. 

England  is  a  transformed  country,  and  in  comparison  with 
agricultural  England,  she  seems  like  a  new  territorial  conquest. 

But  the  growth  of  agriculture  in  England,  on  the  contrary, 
did  not  slacken.  The  necessity  of  supplying  these  large  centres 
gave  an  added  stimulus  to  methods  of  agriculture,  and,  what 
is  extremely  important  and  of  far-reaching  influence,  it  opened 
the  most  magnificent  market  for  the  agricultural  produce  of 
the  Colonies,  both  alimentary  and  industrial  products,  but 
mainly  agricultural  products  for  industry. 

The  relations  brought  about  between  the  Colonies  with 
their  agricultural  products  and  the  manufacturing  metropolis, 
which  works  for  the  whole  world,  caused  a  most  extraordinary 
increase  of  the  navy,  and  thereby  an  almost  unlimited  extension 
of  territory  in  which  it  was  possible  for  English  systems  of 
agriculture  to  take  root.  The  whole  world,  wherever  the 
climate  is  sufficiently  temperate,  is  an  open  field  for  agriculture 
for  English  colonists. 

In  the  Colonies,  where  she  has  not  only  commercial  centres, 
but  a  Saxon  agricultural  population  possessing  estates  of  a 
small  or  moderate  size,  England  founds  not  only  commercial 
ports,  but  states  which  are  united  to  her,  and  are  as  solid  as 
old  England  herself,  and  which  re-establish  the  equilibrium 
32 


498          GREAT  PARTICULARIST  NATIONS 

between  the  Saxon  agricultural  population  and  the  Saxon 
industrial  population. 

Moreover,  even  the  Saxon  industrial  population  has  retained 
that  essential  and  fundamental  Saxon  formation  which  makes 
the  whole  race  aspire  to  the  possibility  of  each  individual 
making  for  himself  an  estate  of  moderate  size,  or  at  any  rate 
a  small  one,  where  he  may  preserve  his  complete  private  in- 
dependence, in  whatever  great  industrial  or  commercial  affairs 
he  may  be  engaged. 

That  accounts  for  the  fact  that,  generally  speaking,  the 
urban  population  alters  the  traditional  Saxon  type  so  little. 
It  has  remained  deeply  attached  to  the  idea  of  the  estate  and 
the  part  it  plays  in  relation  to  the  liberty  of  the  individual, 
whilst  at  the  same  time  it  has  given  a  fresh  impetus  to  the 
ancient  energy  of  the  race  by  enlarging,  through  industry,  the 
field  of  competition,  by  increasing  the  force  of  the  influence 
of  personal  initiative  and  the  resources  upon  which  people 
rely  who  make  their  way  up  in  the  social  scale  by  their  own 
efforts. 

The  United  States  of  America,  which  are  grouped  on  a 
contiguous  territory,  give  a  better  illustration  of  this  pheno- 
menon, which  is  more  difficult  to  grasp  in  the  case  of  England, 
because  her  territory  is  so  scattered. 

The  country  between  the  Atlantic  and  the  Alleghanies, 
which  was  entirely  rural  in  1776,  as  we  saw,  is  now  largely 
occupied  by  an  industry  which  rivals  that  of  England.  Now, 
it  is  to  the  interest  of  these  American  manufacturers  that 
the  Western  Territory  should  be  inhabited  by  agriculturists 
in  order  to  increase  the  production  of  raw  material  and  the 
number  of  possible  purchasers.  The  chief  industrial  and 
commercial  towns  on  the  shores  of  the  Atlantic  have  among 
other  things  brought  about  the  construction  of  enormous 
railways  and  the  occupation  of  the  vast  stretches  of  land 
bordering  them,  by  means  of  loans  made  to  the  farmers  on  the 
security  of  the  estate.  In  this  way  industry  is  an  employer 
of  agriculture,  and  the  American  gentry,  the  now  celebrated 
farmers,  prosper,  owing  to  the  very  thing  which  looks  as  if 
it  is  bound  to  abolish  their  class. 

The  rural  gentry  there,  as  in  England,  guarantees  the 
stability  of  the  country  and  of  the  race  by  constantly  occupying 


THE  UNITED  STATES  499 

vacant  lands  in  the  form  of  estates  of  moderate  size,  which  are 
characteristic  of  the  gentry  of  the  remotest  times.  So  we 
again  find  in  the  end  what  we  found  in  the  beginning  and  all 
through  the  course  of  this  history  of  the  particularist  form  of 
society — namely,  that  rural  gentry  which  to-day  in  America,  as 
formerly  and  always  in  England,  comes  forward  on  occasion 
to  support  or  repress  those  who  are  leaders  of  public  affairs 
or  initiators  of  enterprises  which  concern  the  future  of  the  race. 
Let  us  pay  homage,  as  a  finale,  to  Social  Science,  which, 
like  sciences  in  general,  enables  us  to  grasp  so  firmly  the  admir- 
ably simple  causes  of  the  most  powerful  phenomena.  Could 
Social  Science  have  revealed  anything  simpler,  or  in  a  more 
precise  manner,  than  the  causes  of  greatness  of  the  most  powerful 
human  race  the  world  has  yet  seen  ? 


INDEX 


Agriculture,   attempts  to  revive,   in 
France,  411. 

subsidised,  419. 

Sully  tries  to  restore,  420. 

under  official  burgesses,  422,  423. 

attempts   to   revive,   under    Louis 
xvi.,  447. 

growth  of  in  England,  497. 
Alans,  93,  100. 
Albert  n.  of  Germany,  457. 
Alemanni,  127,  344. 
Aleux,  162. 
Alfred,  leader  of  Saxons,  266. 

almost  deserted  by  Saxons,  267. 

organises  a  rising  of  Saxons,  268. 
Amalfi,  369. 

America  encourages  her  own  manu- 
facture, 490. 

opening  of  War  of  Independence 

in,  491. 

American     colonies      rebel     against 
England,  486,  487. 

colonists,      cause      of      unanimity 
among,  487,  488. 

colonists,  importance  of  their  inde- 
pendent estates,  488. 

rebellion  begins,  489. 
Angles,  origin  of,  239. 

attack  England,  240. 

found  Northumbria,  241. 

found  East  Anglia,  242. 

found  Mercia,  243. 

compared  with  Saxons,  244. 

related  to  Old  Germans,  245. 

immense  size  of  their  domains,  246. 

abuse   of   monastic   grants   under, 
247. 

assimilated  by  Saxons,  254. 
Anglo-Saxons,  213. 

development  of,  257. 

rarely  use  navigation,  260. 

rival  the  Hanseatics,  379. 
Ango,  John,  435. 
Aragon,  403. 

united  to  Castille,  404. 
Arthur,  King,  epic  of,  232. 
Asaland,  14. 


Ases,  14. 

brotherhood  of,  26. 

identified  with  "  Royal  "  Scythians, 

27. 
Asgard,  its  probable  situation,  26,  27. 

its  situation  in  relation  to  the  East, 

29. 

Assembly,  or  Folkmot,  235. 
Associ£-Mritier,  70,  71. 
Austrasia,  130. 
Austria,  house  of,  356. 

increases  in  power,  360. 
Avars,  93. 

Barbarian  Laws,  174,  175. 
Bastarnes,  28. 
Bavarians.  346. 
Bede,  245,  247,  251. 
Benefice,  origin  of,  160. 

name  of,  falls  out  of  use,  182. 
Beneficiaries  not  exempt  from  military 

service,  161. 

Brandenburg,  March  of,  357,  458. 
Britons  defeated  in  North  by  Angles, 

240. 
Burgundians,  100,  113. 

Cabot,  John,  485. 

Cape  of  Good  Hope  discovered,  395. 
Capet,  Hugh,  330,  331,  333. 
Capetians,  insignificance  of  early,  329, 
330. 

history  of,  as  feudal  lords,  332-34. 
Capitularies,  173. 
Caravan  leaders,  24,  25. 
Castille,  403. 

united  to  Aragon,  404. 
Celts,  route  across  Europe,  2. 

in  Britain,  217. 

defeated  by  Jutes  under  Hengist, 

221. 
Cerdic,   heads    second   expedition  of 

Saxons,  231. 
Chansons  de  Geste,  325. 
Charlemagne  had  no  capital  city,  165. 

as  a  great  landowner,  165,  170. 

source  of  income,  170. 


501 


502 


INDEX 


Charlemagne — continued. 
his  house,  172. 
his   methods   of    dealing   with   his 

great  beneficiaries,  172. 
protects  small  landowners,  174. 
as      president      of      the      General 

Assembly,  174. 
military  service  under,  175. 
extends  territory  of  Franks,  177. 
crowned  emperor,  179. 
attacks  the  Saxons,  179. 
Charles  v.,  404. 
Charles  ym.,  426,  427. 
Chauci,  in  Saxon  plain,  84. 
identified  with  Saxi,  84. 
described  by  Tacitus,  85. 
differ  from  other   German   tribes, 

87. 

Cherusci,  in  Saxon  plain,  84. 
Childeric,  108. 
Chrysargyre,  290. 
Clovis  reaches  Paris,  116. 

extends  power,  126. 
Coeur,  James,  435. 
Colbert,  411. 

revives  industry,  431. 

introduces  system  of  corporations, 

432. 

tries  to  revive  commerce,  437. 
Colonies,  under  French,  435,  436. 

made  by  England,  496. 
Colonists,   France  lacks  agricultural, 

437. 
Columbus  settles  at  Lisbon,  395. 

reaches  America,  396. 
Commendation,  157. 
Commerce  between  remote  places  in 

ancient  times,  25. 
under  feudal  system  in  France,  191. 
in  feudal  towns,  297. 
taxation  of,  under  feudalism,  298. 
before  growth  of  urban  industries. 

362. 

Hanses  or  Guilds,  364. 
with  distant  places  opened,  366. 
in  Venice,  369. 
of  Neo-Germans,  374. 
with  East,  382. 
decadence  of  in  France,  419. 
under  Philip  the  Fair,  433. 
attempts  to  restrict,  435. 
Commons,  House  of,  474. 
Communal  movement,  aim  of,  303. 
Commune,  origin  of,  308. 
formation  of,  309. 
claims  of,  311. 

not  a  particularist  institution,  313 
Communes,  patronised  by  king,  336. 

form  militias,  340. 
Conrad  of  Franconia,  351. 
Co-operation  in  Saxon  plain,  90. 


osmas,  387. 

lount,  origin  of,  12?. 

duty  of,  122. 

liable  to  dismissal,  124. 

title  of,  given  to  large  landowners, 

163. 

Jovilham,  lands  in  India,  395. 
>omwell,  482. 

Crusaders  stop  in  Portugal,  392. 
>usades,  211. 

causes  of,  212. 

produce  nothing  lasting,  324. 

open  trade  with  the  East,  387. 
Cultivation  of  land,  "  direct  "  system, 
135. 

"  indirect  "  system,  136. 
Cultivators,  136. 

bound  to  soil,  137. 

change  in,  under  Franks,  141. 

converted  into  serfs,  145. 

tenant,  204. 

Danegeld,  270. 
Danes  attack  England,  261. 
take  lands  of  Angles,  262. 
origin  of  invasions  of,  264. 
variety  of  people  composing  bands 

of,  264. 
occupy  England  by  force  of  arms, 

266. 

the  ordinary,  269. 
second  invasion  of,  270. 
evacuate  England,  271. 
Diaz  discovers  Cape  of  Good  Hope, 
395. 

Ealdormen,  236. 

East  Anglia  founded,  242. 

Eddas,  12. 

the  Song  of  Rig,  21  IT. 
Edward  the  Confessor,  273. 
Egbert  elected  King  of  Wessex,  253. 
Emancipation  of  towns,  312. 
Emigrants,    equipment  of,  in  Saxon 

plain,  96. 
equipment  of  in  modern  Germany, 

97. 
Emigration    from    Saxon     plain    to 

America,  97. 

Estate,  the  small,  in  Norway,  73. 
permanence  of  small,  97. 
staff  of  the,  under  Franks,  143. 
as  bond  of  union,  147. 
influence  of  large,  149. 
binds  vassals  to  landowner,  158. 
heredity  of,  recognised,  182. 
complete  isolation  of,  under  Carlo- 

vingians,  183. 
self-sufficiency    of,     under     Carlo- 

vingians,  191. 
formation  of,  in  Britain,  234, 


INDEX 


503 


E  state — continued. 
emancipation  of,  296. 
condition  of  agricultural,  in  France, 

440,  445. 
formation  of  the,  in  distant  English 

possessions,  484. 

importance  of  the,  in  America,  488. 
Estates,  management  of,  in  time  of 

decadence    of    Roman    Empire, 

134. 

management  of,  by  Franks,  138. 
of    churches    in    regard    to    com- 
mendations, 159. 
Expansion  of  Saxon  race,  92. 
of  particularists,  method  of,  99. 
of     Franks,    under    Charlemagne, 

177. 
of  particularists  in  eleventh  century, 

210. 

of  English  race,  479. 
of  the  English  in  America,  485. 
of  English,  field  for,  497. 

Fairs,  under  feudal  system  in  France, 

193,  362. 

Flemish  excluded  from,  434. 
Federation    in    French    Revolution, 

455. 

Ferdinand  the  Catholic,  404. 
Feudal   system,   isolation   of  estates 

under,  183. 
Feudalism,  principle  of,  established, 

158. 

military,  161. 
depends     on     resistance     to     the 

royal  power,  185. 
obligations  of,  188. 
regular  type  of,  in  Normandy,  280. 
origin  of,  315,  316. 
two  periods  of,  316. 
second    period    produces    nothing 

lasting,  325. 
military,  founded  nothing  lasting, 

327. 

in  Germany,  350. 

Fief  takes  the  place  of  benefice,  182. 
Fins,  on  the  Baltic,  9. 
unlike  the  Suiones,  20. 
as  evil  gods,  21. 
in  valley  of  Danube,  347. 
pay  tribute  to  Charlemagne,  349. 
in  the  Austrian  March,  357. 
affected   by   German   colonisation, 

358. 

Fiords,  main  characteristics,  49. 
Forced  labour,  under  Frankish  system, 

141,  144. 

in  time  of  Merovingians,  149. 
influence    of    high    farming    upon, 

150. 
emancipation  from,  206, 


France,   Eastern  and  Western,    104, 

114. 
returns     to     communal    form     of 

society,  418. 
distress  in,  429. 

lacks  agricultural  colonists,  437. 
Francis  I.,  427,  435. 
Franconia,  345. 
Frankish  emigrants,  find   estates   in 

France,  105. 

chief,  as  public  officer,  111. 
chiefs    adopt    Roman    system    of 

administration,  117. 
invasion   differs   from   other    Ger- 
manic invasions,  1 12. 
invaders  from  Saxon   plain  differ 
from  Franks  from  the  Baltic,  114. 
landowners,     strength     of,     under 

Merovingians,  148. 
landowners  acquire  judicial  powers, 

156. 
Franks,  tribes  of,  102. 

restrained  by  Romans,  103. 
cross  Rhine,  104. 
live  among  Gallo-Romans,  105. 
assert  their  independence,  107. 
assert  independence  of  their  estates, 

109. 

escape  military  service,  116. 
in  the  Merovingian  trustes,  131. 
claim  inviolability   of  the   estate, 

133. 
attitude  of,  towards  military  levies, 

145,  155. 

differ  from  Anglo-Saxons,  256. 
meet  Saxons  on  field  of  Hastings, 

258. 

Frederick  the  Great,  459. 
Free  associations  in  Norway,  73. 

in  Saxon  plain,  90. 
Free-holdings,  153. 

effect  of  commendations  upon,  158. 
Freemen,  on  Frankish  estates,  151. 
escape      military     service     under 

Franks,  155. 
escape  the  count's  jurisdiction,  156. 

Gage,  General,  491. 
Genoa,  369. 
Gentry,  class  of,  464. 
power  of,  465,  466. 
make  their  way  upwards,  477. 
power  of  elite  of,  483. 
Gepid£e,  100,  113. 

German  races  uninfluenced  by  early 
Greek  and  Roman  civilisation, 
28,  29. 

Germans,  route  across  Europe,  2. 
importance  of  role  played  by,  94. 
left   in   Central   Europe   after   in- 
vasions of  barbarians,  343, 


504 


INDEX 


Germans — continued. 
under  Charlemagne,  348. 
tribes  of,  spread  into  Europe,  93. 
Germany,  limits  of,  347. 

feudalism  established  in,  350. 
kingdom  of,  formed,  351. 
extended,  353. 
feudatories  emancipate  themselves, 

354. 

colonisation  of,  357,  358. 
power  of,  what  based  on,  458,  459. 
Getae,  27,  28. 
Gothic  emigrants,  what  they  owed  to 

Odin,  36. 

settle  in  Norway,  55. 
type  of,  in  Norway,  56. 
conditions  they  found  in  Norway, 

57. 

means  of  transport,  60. 
form  of  dwelling  of,  62. 
causes  of  their  independence,  62. 
estates  of,  63. 
system  of  disposition  of  property 

of,  64. 
independence  of  father    and    son, 

65. 

their  farming  instincts,  65. 
predominance  of  the  landed  estate 

over  other  means  of  living,  66. 
the  circumstances  which  furthered 

their  independence,  69. 
Goths  become  intensive  cultivators, 

8. 
reach  eastern  slope  of  Scandinavia, 

8. 

learn  seafaring,  9. 
in  the  Song  of  Rig,  22. 
Guilds,  in  France,  origin  of,  305. 
repressed  in  north  of  France,  306. 

Habsburg,  house  of,  356. 
Hanseatic  League,  378,  379. 
Hanseatic   towns  in    Germany,    375, 

377,  378. 
Hanses,  364. 
Harald  Haarfager,  276. 
Harold,  King  of  Saxons,  283. 
Hengist,  220. 

acquires  Isle  of  Thanet  and  Isle  of 
Wight,  221. 

founds  kingdom  of  Jutes  in  Kent, 

222. 

Henry  n.,  464. 
Henry  iv.  aids  agriculture,  420,  421. 

fails  to  support  colonies,  436. 
Henry  vn.,  473,  475. 

encourages  Cabot,  485. 
Henry  of  Burgundy,  390. 
Henry  of  Portugal  encourages  naviga- 
tion, 393. 
Heruli,  100,  113. 


High  farming  under  Franks,  144. 

France  loses  superiority  in,  418. 

adopted  by  gentry,  477. 
Hohenzollerns,  458. 
Homage,  186. 

liege,  199. 

Horsa,  death  of,  221. 
Hospitium,  151. 

name  for  free-holdings,  154. 
Huns,  93,  100. 

Immunities,  granted  to  Franks,  110. 

117,  146. 

Independence,  declaration  of,  490,  491. 
Industry,   prosperity  of,  in  eleventh 
century  in  France,  300. 

under  monarchy,  424. 

in  Italy,  425. 

decays  after  Colbert's  death,  432. 

development  of,  in  England,  480. 

free  competition  in,  496. 

in  America,  498. 
Isolation  of  Norwegians,  70. 

of  Saxons,  90. 

Jacobins,  456. 

John  the  Great,  of  Portugal,  391,  393. 

John  ii.  of  Portugal,  394. 

Judges  on  circuit,  466. 

Jutes,  27,  28. 

trade  with  Britons,  219. 

a  commercial  people,  222. 
Jutland,     geographical     transforma- 
tions in,  78. 

abundance  of  fish  in,  79. 

Knight,  importance  of  the,  in  Middle 

Ages,  201. 
causes  producing  the,  323. 

Land  system  in  England,  469,  470. 
Landowners,    small,    under    Charle- 
magne, 174. 
great,  supreme  after  Charlemagne's 

death,  181. 
great,  reduce  military  service  under 

Carlovingians,  197. 

ruined  in  France,  443. 

Law,  the  Common,  274. 

the  Common  recognised,  285. 
Lisbon  captured  by  Portugal,  392. 
Lombards,  113. 
London,  advantages  of  situation,  219. 

Hanse  of,  364. 

Lords,  decline  of  power  in  France,  316. 
weakness  of,  from  military  stand- 
point, 318. 
position  as  landowners,  in  second 

period  of  feudalism,  318,  320. 
become  knight- err  ants  and  warriors, 
322, 


INDEX 


505 


Lords —continued. 

income  of,  408. 

Norman,    combine    with    Saxons, 
463. 

House  of,  473. 

creation  of  new,  475. 
Louis  xiii.,  421. 
Louis  xiv.,  422. 

revives  industry,  431. 
Louis  xv.,  447. 
Louis  XVL,  447. 

Magistrates,  created  in  Britain,  237. 

Magna  Carta,  285. 

Mansus  dominicatus,  140. 

Mansus   servilis   sen   aspicicns,    140, 

141. 
Marcel,  Etienne,  409. 

organises  a  rising,  412. 
Massagetes,  28. 

Mercia,  founded  by  Angles,  243. 
Merovingian  administration,  121. 
Middle  class,  duties  of,  476. 
Military    service,    synonymous    with 
vassalage,  162. 

under  Charlemagne,  175. 

under  feudalism  at  its  height,  196. 

with  regard  to  the  defence  of  the 
estate  in  Middle  Ages,  203. 

Anglo-Saxons  escape  from,  464,  465. 
Monasteries  in  England,  248. 

Navigation,  not  much  used  by  Saxons, 
260. 

methods  used  for  making  fleet  in 

England,  479. 
Neustria,  130. 
Nomads,  invasions  of,  7. 
Normandy,  duchy  of,  founded,  277. 

dukes  of,  282. 
Normans,  origin  of,  274. 

adopt  feudal  system,  279. 

military  expeditions  of,  280. 

conquer  England,  282. 

exploit  Saxons,  283. 

cause  of  their  strength  in  England, 
284. 

take  sides  with  Saxons,  285. 
Northumbria,  founded  by  Angles,  241. 

decadence  of,  249. 

Norway,   peculiar  characteristics   of 
39,  45. 

the  Gulf  Stream,  40. 

abundance  of  fish  in,  40. 

precipitous  fiords  of,  45. 

salmon  fishing  in,  51. 

sheltered  waters  of,  52. 

the  Skjaergaard,  53. 

development  of  land  cultivation  in, 
72. 

the  small  estate  in,  73. 


Norwegians,  their  self-sufficiency,  73. 
expansion  of  the  race,  76. 

Odin,  in  Ynglinga  Saga,  14-17. 

his  exodus  to  the  Baltic,  16,  17,  31. 

creates  town  centres,  18. 

and  industrial  arts,  18. 

military  character  of,  18. 

and  intellectual  culture,  19. 

and  religion,  19. 

his  genius  for  founding  cities,  20. 

his  descendants,  23. 

his  character  of  caravan  leader,  24, 
25,  34. 

identified  with  Mercury,  32. 

meaning  of,  33. 
Odinids,  meaning  of,  35. 

as  warriors,  35,  36. 

meet  particularists  in  Saxon  plain, 
100. 

stir  up  tribes  in  Baltic  plain,  100. 

enlist  Saxon  emigrants,  102. 

relations  between  them  and  Franks, 
106. 

lead  Jutes  to  Britain,  220. 

in  Britain,  234. 

stir  up  Angles,  239. 

in  Gothic  territory,  263. 

as  leaders  of  Danes,  265. 

"  kings  of  the  land,"  269. 

in  Norway,  275. 

in  kingdom  of  Upsala,  275. 

in  Normandy,  278. 
Officials,  aim  of,  in  France,  414. 

increase  of  number  of,  415. 

take  place  of  lords,  423. 

increase  of,  427. 
Ostrogoths,  100,  113. 
Otho,  353. 

Parliament  of  Paris,  448. 

tries  to  develop  colonies  for  advan- 
tage of  mother  country,  486. 
Particularist    family,    transformation 

of  patriarchal  into,  1. 
form  of  society,  origin  of,  11. 
produced     on    western     slope    of 

Scandinavia,  38. 
how  it  developed,  64. 
formed  on  west  coast  of  Norway, 

69. 

differs  from  patriarchal,  72. 
formation  of,  summarised,  92. 
in     relation     to     great     Frankish 

landowners,  188. 
Particularists,  in  Norway,  public  life 

abolished  by,  70. 
the  small  estate  takes   precedence 

over  fishing,  71. 
settle  in  Saxon  plain,  84. 
influenced  by  Saxon  plain,  88. 


INDEX 


Particularists — continued. 
and  public  life,  91. 
constant  invasion  of  new  lands  by, 

98. 

bonds  uniting,  147. 
extend  their  influence  among  the 

Old  Germans,  178. 
love  isolation  of  the  estate,  183. 
on     large     estates     under     Carlo"- 

vingians,  189. 
expansion  of,  in  eleventh  century, 

210. 

among  Normans,  278. 
form  most  stable  part  of  population 

of  Normandy,  281,  282. 
first  to  practise  industry  in  France, 

288. 

in  Germany,  359. 
resist  monarchy,  406. 
foster  self-government  in  England, 

467. 
Patriarchal   community  differs   from 

particularist,  91. 
Peace  of  God,  207. 

Peasants,  condition  of,  under  feudal 
system  and  monarchy  in  France, 
410. 

rising  of,  413. 
condition  of  in  1740,  440. 
go  to  towns,  446. 
Peers,  173. 

trial  by,  187. 

Pepin  the  Short,  165,  169. 
Percy,  Lord,  494. 
Philip  the  Fair  of  Austria,  404. 
Philip  ii.  of  Spain,  401,  405. 
Pickering,  Colonel,  491. 
Pisa,  369. 

Pitcairne,  Major,  492. 
Portugal     trades    with    North    Sea, 

389. 

origin  of,  390. 
patriarchal  type  in,  391. 
trade  grows  in,  392. 
agriculture  declines,  399. 
colonies  of,  400. 
annexed  to  Spain,  401. 
Precaire,  159. 
Prussia,  357. 

monarchy  of,  formed,  458. 
the  State  and  society  in,  460. 
Putnam,  General,  494. 

Revolution  in  France  not  social,  439. 
lack  of  resistance  to  the,  453. 
aims  at  a  communal  organisation, 

454. 

the  Federation,  455. 
strengthens    form    of    government 

used  by  monarchy,  456. 
in  England,  482. 


Richelieu  tries  to  revive  commerce, 

437. 

schemes  of,  449,  450. 
Rolf  or  Rollo,  276. 

leads  Odinids  to  Neustria,  277. 
adopts  feudal  system,  279. 
Roman    expeditions   in   North    Ger- 
many, 95. 
law,  117. 
proconsul,  119. 

social    and    political    constitution 
contrasted   with    that  of  parti- 
cularists,  120. 
roads,  190. 

occupation  of  Britain,  215. 
Romans    do   not   colonise    England, 

214. 

Rome,  original  constitution  of,  118. 
Rousseau,  455. 

Contrat  Social  of,  460. 
Routes  to  Tropics,  384. 
Royal  bailiffs  and  provosts,  341. 
Royal  power  annihilated  after  Carlo- 

vingians,  184. 
reappears,  328. 
acquires  military  command  under 

Louis  vi.,  335. 

patronises  the  communes,  336. 
acquires  help  of  highwaymen  under 

Philip  Augustus,  338. 
obtains  control  of  towns,  339. 
need  of  money  felt  by,  407. 
increase  of  war  under,  410. 
organises  body  of  officials,  413. 
treasury  under,  417. 
attempts    to    revive    industry    in 

France,  427. 
omnipotent,  451. 
Rugii,  100,  113. 

Salmon  in  Norway,  51. 
Savaron,  421. 
Saxon  plain,  80. 

abundance  of  fish  in,  88. 

part    played    by,    in    growth    of 

particularists,  94. 
Saxons,  means  of  transport  in  Saxon 

plain,  90. 

fight  against  Charlemagne,  179. 
introduced  into  Britain  by  Odinids, 

220. 

differ  from  Jutes,  222. 
pure,  enter  Britain,  226. 
colonise  south  of  England,  227. 
compared  to  the  first  Americans, 

229. 

drive  out  Britons  from  Sussex,  230. 
administration  of  justice  under,  in 

Britain,  236. 

influence    of    self-dependence    of, 
upon  institutions  in  England,  237. 


INDEX 


507 


Saxons — continued. 

gain   the   ascendency  in  England, 

250. 
manner  of  gaining  supremacy  in 

England,  251. 
compared   to   Americans   in   their 

occupation  of  new  lands,  251. 
assimilate  Angles,  254. 
meet  Franks  on  field  of  Hastings, 

258. 

pay  tribute  to  Danes,  267. 
expel  Danes,  271. 
recognise    King    of    Denmark    as 

King  of  England,  271. 
conquered  by  Normans,  283. 
resist  government  of  Normans,  284. 
re-establish  self-government,  286. 
in  Europe,  343. 

held  in  check  by  Charlemagne,  349. 
enter  military  profession,  352. 
(of  Saxon  plain)  take  up  commerce, 

376. 
Saxony,  dukes  of,  352. 

Duke  of,  Emperor  of  Germany,  355. 
regains  liberty,  355. 
Scandinavian  Sagas,  as  evidence  of  an 

imported  civilisation,  11-13. 
Ynglinga  Saga,  14. 
Scutage-money,  464. 
Scythians,  27,  28. 
Serfs,  under  Franks,  106. 

emancipation  of,  in  France,  205. 
emancipate  themselves,  317. 
Serres,  Olivier  de,  420. 
Sheriff,  236,  462. 

loses  his  power,  466. 
Slaves,  Roman  system  of,  89. 
in  Saxon  plain,  89. 
under  Franks,  106. 
under  Romans,  134. 
on  same  footing  as  cultivators  in 

some  cases,  138. 
under  Franks,  139. 
in  Austrasia,  140. 
their  stability  on  Fraukish  estates, 

145. 
Slavs,  100,  347. 

pay  tribute  to  Charlemagne,  349. 
in  Baltic  plain,  357. 
influenced  by  Germans,  358. 
in  March  of  Brandenburg,  458. 
Small  farming  in  Saxon  plain,  89. 
Small  landowners  employ  commenda- 
tion, 157. 

Snorro  Sturluson,  12,  14. 
Spain,   Philip   n.    annexes   Portugal, 

401. 

natural  formation  of,  402. 
autocratic  monarchy  in,  405. 
colonies  of,  406. 
Squire,  the,  465. 


States-general,  origin  of,  407. 

country   districts   not  represented 
in,  411. 

representatives  of  towns  in,  411. 

official  burgesses  in,  414. 

in  1614,  421,  432. 
Steppe  of  Germany,  3-6. 
Suevi,  100,  113,  127,  344. 
Suiones  differ  from  Goths,  20. 
Sully,  411,  420. 
Swabia,  house  of,  355,  356. 
Swabians,  344. 

Taxes     paid     by     agriculturists     in 

France,  408. 
on  manufactures,  409. 
Thegns,  236. 
Thuringians,  127,  345. 
Thyssagetes,  28. 
Tolls  for  keeping  up  roads,  190. 

become  rights  attached  to  estates, 

191. 

under  feudalism,  298, 
Towns,      insignificance      of,      under 

feudalism  in  France,  193. 
government     of,     under     Roman 

Empire  in  France,  288. 
Gallo  -  Roman,     during     invasion, 

291. 

under  Merovingians,  292. 
under  Carlovingians,  293,  294. 
under  feudalism,  295,  296. 
in  Germany,  376. 
representatives      of,      in      States - 

general,  411. 

submit  to  arbitrary  taxation,  413. 
paucity  of,  in  England  till  eight- 
eenth century,  472. 
formation    of    large,    in    England, 

497. 

Transport,  means  of,  round  Berlin,  7. 
means  of,  in  Norway,  60. 
means  of,  in  Saxon  plain,  90,  92. 
means     of,     used     by     Frankish 

emigrants,  102. 

means  of,  in  France,  under  Carlo- 
vingians, 189. 
means  of,  used  by  Anglo-Saxons, 

260. 
means  of,  employed  by  merchants 

in  France,  364. 
Treasury,  control  of,  448. 

methods  employed  by,  452. 
Tropics,  routes  to,  382,  384. 
Truce  of  God,  207. 

originated  among  southern  guilds, 

307. 

Truste,  101. 

Tudors,  473,  476,  477,  480. 
Turks    take    possession    of    east   of 
Mediterranean,  388. 


508 


INDEX 


Vandals,  100,  113. 

Varegues,  275. 

Vasco  da  Gama,  lands  in  India,  397. 

Vassal,  origin  of,  151. 

his  hospitium,  or  land,  152. 
Venice,  rise  of,  368. 

rivals  of,  369. 

advantages  of,  371. 

contends  with  Arab  pirates,  386.* 
Vikings,  263. 

Virginia  heads  the  rebellion,  489. 
Visigoths,  100,  113. 

Walkyries,  32. 


Wars  of  Roses,  473. 
Washington,  George,  495. 
Wends,  100. 
Wessex  absorbs  Sussex,  231. 

evacuated  by  Britons,  233. 
Wessex,  defeats  Danes,  268. 
William  the  Conqueror,  282. 

crowned  at  London,  283. 

occupation    of    England    by, 

462. 

William  i.  of  Germany,  459. 
Witenagemot,  235. 

Young,  Arthur,  422,  444. 


461, 


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